Polyphemus — Roleplayer Guild

THE CRIMSON AVENGER

Ace Chemical Processing Plant
Gotham City, NJ
1:26 AM Local Time

The guard was big, maybe 6'4” and 230 pounds. The scything right would have done some damage if it connected. The chances of that were low, however. He was a poor fighter. Not uncommon for big guys, their size prevents fights from starting in the first place so they never take time to learn.

Dropping the big man was simplicity itself. Wing would approve. Two gloved palms clapped over the ears to disorient. A swinging heel to the knee to take his footing. And with a firm grip already on the man's head, three sharp knee strikes directly to the face took him out of the fight. The big man crumbled on himself to the concrete production floor.

The Crimson Avenger allowed himself a triumphant grin, which quickly turned into a grimace as he heard shouts behind him. He glanced back, squinting in the dim after-hours lights to see the white shirts of three or four more uniformed security guards pointing at him. He had what he needed already, no point in sticking around. With a brief pat at his coat pocket to reassure himself the plastic container was still sealed and unbroken, the Crimson Avenger set out at a run between the tall uncovered storage tanks, ducking below thick rusted pipes. He knew his red coat would be difficult to spot in the underlit factory. 

Shots rang out, and the Crimson Avenger heard the ping of a ricochet. No good. The guards were undertrained, like everyone on the Ace Chemicals payroll. They were just shooting in his general direction, not stopping to aim, not stopping to consider what might happen if one of their wild shots struck a rusted tank filled with say, chlorine gas or methyl isocyanate. 

He crouched low as he ran, moving in a zigzag to make a harder target. He jumped railings, ducked under low-hanging catwalks as he moved through the labyrinthine facility. He had no intention of pulling his own .45s to engage the guards. No reason to kill them, and besides a pitched gunfight in this corner-cutting facility could easily turn Gotham City into another Bhopal. Just had to make it out of there with the sample intact. And ideally without any holes in his body. 

In the half-darkness, two red lights caught his attention. As he charged towards them, the glowing letters E and T became visible. Of course Ace Chemicals couldn't even be bothered to change the bulbs in the fire exit sign. Even the simplest and most obvious safety protocols were too much. 

Another crack of a .38 revolver behind him, and this time the bullet dug into the dirty concrete floor just a few feet to the Crimson Avenger's left. Maybe it was pure luck, or maybe they had spotted him. The Crimson Avenger pushed himself even harder, covering the last twenty feet to the fire escape at a dead sprint and slamming against it with his shoulder. It sprang wide open, somewhat to the surprise of a cynical part of his brain that had expected the management to have bricked it up for some absurd reason.

He dashed across the open ground of the parking lot, scarlet coattails fluttering in the wind. Sweat beaded underneath his mask as his feet pounded against the pavement- he was beginning to think wingtip dress shoes might not be the best choice for this line of work. Finally he found himself at the chain link fence surrounding the Ace facility, rusted and ill-maintained like everything else here. The Crimson Avenger quickly clambered over it, dropped the eight feet to the ground, tucked and rolled. He was immediately up and running, making his way deeper into Gotham's industrial district, trying to put a few blocks between him and Ace Chemicals. It was three blocks later, behind one of the hundreds of abandoned warehouses of this city, that he finally skidded to a stop, sucking in lungfuls of dirty Gotham air, hands shaking slightly as the adrenaline flowing through his body finally began to slow. 

He did it. The Crimson Avenger almost didn't believe it. He gingerly patted his pocket, was relieved to find the container undisturbed. He really did it. Not bad for only his third time out. 

Now to complete the getaway. He quickly looked around for any security cameras or potential witnesses. Finding none, he pulled the burner phone from his pocket, quickly texted Wing Hao with his location. The car would be here in a few minutes. He peeled off the coat, hat, and mask, removed the shoulder holster with the twin .45s. Pulling a well-folded grocery bag from his pocket, he dumped everything into the small cloth bag and waited patiently. 

Now to casual prying eyes he was just Lee Travis, a millionaire wearing a rumpled and sweaty suit and clutching a wrinkled grocery bag on a street corner in the warehouse district waiting for a ride in the middle of the night. Come to think of it, that still sounded pretty suspicious, and he had no idea what he would say to any cop or passerby who confronted him. Lee admitted to himself that this part was going to need some work.

East End Legal Clinic
Gotham City, NJ
12:13 PM Local Time

“Fiat panis,” Lee Travis said as he let himself into Jill Carlyle's cluttered office. She looked up from a brief in annoyance, but her look of irritation softened at the smile on Lee's angular face, and melted altogether when she saw the paper sack he held up from Big Belly Burger. “#3 with extra pickles and a strawberry shake. Your usual.”

She snatched the bag away, hungrily began wolfing down the burger. “Alright, Lee,” she managed between bites. “I know you didn't come down here to bring me lunch out of the kindness of your heart. What exactly do you want?”

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” he chuckled ruefully. “Am I that transparent?”

“Usually, yes,” she replied with a smirk as she shoveled a handful of fries into her mouth. “Not so much lately. Come on, out with it.”

He moved an overflowing banker's box off one of her threadbare chairs and sat down. “I've been following with interest the class-action lawsuit you've been working on against the Ace Chemical Processing Plant on behalf of several citizens of the East End and The Narrows.”

“You need to read your own papers, Lee,” Jill sighed. “I gave a statement to your reporter last month, that Barker lady.” She briefly looked uncomfortable. “Look, Lee, you don't suppose that's why-”

“No, no,” Lee said with a practiced aristocratic wave. “Her killer was not related to Ace Chemicals. Claudia, bless her, was very much in the habit of turning over stones. It's been left to others to stomp out what crawls out from underneath them.”

“That's very colorful imagery to use on a woman eating her lunch.”

“Mea culpa. But please, tell me more about this suit.”

She shrugged. “It's stalled, there's not much to tell. During the pandemic, Gotham City had the highest mortality rates in neighborhoods just downstream of the Ace plant. Their staff there fared even worse. There was some medical research, nothing conclusive, to suggest exposure to certain chemicals might worsen the Markovian Virus. A chemical and biological tag team on the same sets of organs.”

“And your clients suspected Ace Chemicals was releasing these chemicals into the groundwater.”

She nodded vigorously as she drained the milkshake. “Exactly. I commissioned a study of the water in these neighborhoods and did find higher than usual amounts of lead, arsenic, and several of the other chemicals listed in the study. But Ace refused to allow independent investigators to inspect the plant. They wouldn't confirm or deny whether the suspect chemicals were at their plant. They've paid top dollar to an uptown attorney and even threatened a countersuit against the people of those neighborhoods. People living from paycheck to paycheck below the poverty line. As you can see,” Jill said with an expansive wave around her overcrowded, cheap office, “I don't really have the resources to directly challenge a white-shoe firm like that unless I come up with some kind of smoking gun. Which I suspect brings me to your sudden interest in the case,” she concluded, staring at him expectantly over the rims of her glasses.

He grinned disarmingly, leaned back. “At my office this morning, some anonymous Good Samaritan dropped off photos of dramatically unsafe storage from the high-security area of Ace Chemicals. Not to mention a jar of chemical waste alleged to have been collected from open and improperly stored barrels stacked haphazardly in a side room with open drainage. I've sent a sample for analysis but I think it'll match with your groundwater tests.”

Jill was skeptical. “Anonymously donated evidence like that would be torn to shreds in court. Without going through proper public channels there's no way to verify these claims. Photos can be faked, chemicals obtained from just about anywhere. A good lawyer will think of this and a judge won't allow it.”

Lee grinned. “So I publish the photos in the Globe-Leader and all of my other newspapers. I write editorials pressuring industry leaders not to patronize Ace. I publish the findings on this chemical evidence and interview the people affected. Media can change perceptions. Eventually the public outcry will force them to allow you to have your independent inspection. They're caught in flagrante.”

Jill stared, before a small chuckle. “It'll take a lot of luck, but it might work.”

“It'll work.”

Jill finished the last few fries, patted her lips contentedly with a napkin. “You've been acting different the last month or so, Lee. Not in a bad way. But you're more focused. Driven. Used to be you would just write an op-ed about this kind of thing and call it a day.”

Lee's smile faded. “Let's just say I had a wake-up call around that time. Call it white guilt, noblesse oblige, whatever. But I can't just sit by anymore. I have to do something. And I'm guessing you feel the same way, otherwise you'd be in some uptown skyscraper instead of this run-down shopfront.”

“The greater good, eh?”

“Bonum commune communitatis. Anyways, Jill, I'm sure you're busy, I won't take up any more of your time. Keep an eye out for the Globe-Leader. We're going to do this together.”

The Travis Residence
Gotham City, NJ
6:43 PM Local Time

“Lee, the time is right for acquisitions. Print media is hurting and publications are going cheap,” Amos Vangilder insisted, his voice oddly tinny over the phone. Lee guess the CEO of the Travis Group was driving. 

“If print media is doing so badly, then what's the point of buying up newspapers? Why spend money on a dying field?” Lee asked as he walked into the kitchen of his Gotham Village brownstone. He dabbed at sweat running down his face and hoped Vangilder couldn't tell over the phone just how out of breath he was. 

“We take over, beef up their online presence, sell more space to advertisers. There's plenty of smaller cities like Hub City, Fawcett City, and Vanity with broadsheets independently owned by small-time businesspeople who don't have the experience or capital to make these operations profitable, especially after losing staff to the pandemic. They'll be happy to take the payout and reinvest in something they understand. Gold mines and restaurants.”

“Well, Amos, that sounds fascinating and I'd love to discuss it with you when I'm less distracted,” Lee said as he drank down a sports drink and took a few deep breaths. “Have a report on my desk soon, okay?” He hung up without saying goodbye, held up an apologetic hand to his martial arts tutor Wing Hao, waiting impatiently in the doorway.

“Break's over, Lee,” Wing growled. “We have to get back to work if you want to keep living through these nighttime excursions.”

Lee set the towel down on the counter and nodded in agreement. “Run me through it again,” he said as both men took fighting stances and prepared to spar once more.
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