2013.07.24 - Printing Power

Ten minutes to wash up. Five minutes to arm up. Two minutes to hit the road. Twenty-three minutes to swap out from a sport bike to a blacked out BMW (Domino wanted the extra trunk space.)
Forty-six minutes to get out to the right neighborhood in Gotham. It's a run-down industrial complex though a fair number of facilities are still in some state of operation, whether as legitimate business or as something a little more shady.
The address the two mercs of the night walk the last few hundred feet to is one of the less legal operations. Dom knows what the gameplan is, though she hadn't bothered to get Kurt up any sooner. Now that they're practically right on top of it, this is the time when she decides to share some intel.
"Here's the deal, Furball. There's a group of arms dealers holed up around here. Our job is to shut down their operation, but it's a little more interesting than your standard slash and burn. These kids are printing their ordnance right out of a CAD program. They're cheap, they can sell 'em like throwaway phones and in a matter of hours they've made up their lost inventory. No serials to trace. This seems to have upset a lot of people, go figure."
That said she flicks the power onto the reflex sight perched atop her new Sig assault rifle then charges the bolt. "Payout's fifteen thousand, each. Any questions?"
Each minute that Domino takes in procuring vehicles and driving is filled with, 'Bamfing would be quicker..'.
Stuck in traffic? 'We don't have to sit here, you know..'
Now, it's a little strange for the elf to be walking. It's dark. Shadows are all over the place.. and Kurt simply can't resist the lure of walking on the sides of buildings, his pointed tail swaying as he does so.
As she shares the intel then, it's to a blue fuzzy mutant that is facing down the side of a building, very much like a squirrel runs down trees. Glowing yellow eyes give his face away, even masked in shadow as they are. He's dressed for the occasion as well; all dark. Canting his head, his tones rise in dubious question. "Printing.. guns? As in, put it on a printer und get a couple dozen copies before you have to empty the queue because you didn't print the correct thing.. sort of gun printing?" It's a concept, apparently, that he's having a little difficulty wrapping his head around. And he works in all axes, too!
The giveaway that he's heard the rest of the spiel, however, is the swishing of his tail. Fifteen thousand will certainly help.
Okay. A lot.
And he asked.
"Und it's time to get them out of production." Too many guns isn't a good thing. For anyone.
"Gott'admit," Babs says softly to the little Original Batgirl Doll that sits beside her main monitor, "3D printing is actually pretty ingenious." And, really, she wondered how long it'd be until the criminal element took it up. After all, the Bat's been using it for ages to create his stuff -- albeit at a higher level than most Makerbots can pull off. And she, herself, has found it damned useful in the lab.
But, printing GUNS? That doesn't really go over well, as far as Oracle is concerned.
Tonight is all about tracking the idiots down. It's not so hard. There are only so many places online that have open sourced, modifiable CAD plans for the things. One-shot wonders, they're considered to be. One bullet fired and discard. But, what if someone figured out how to make them repeatable? Not so far fetched. Weapons boards have been lighting up with allusions to the idea -- the odd troll even claiming to have figured out how to do it.
So, eventually, Oracle manages to narrow down a neighborhood and possible location. What she really needs, now, is some recon in the area... except her regular agents are each involved elsewhere.
Perhaps she'll just take a general scan of the area and send Cass out that way later tonight...
"Yeah, printing," Domino confirms. "Modern polymer-based medium. Know which parts to reinforce and it's apparently so easy that you can download the plans right off of the net. I'd look into it myself but I'm not desperate."
Outside of that same building Kurt's adhered to the side of she crouches low and peers through a grimy basement window, spotting light nearby. "The people are secondary concerns. They can always set up shop somewhere else with the right backing, but that's not our problem. The contract specifically said that we are to make sure that no component can ever be fabricated here ag-Ah!"
Dom's head whips around, one hand already on the grip of a pistol when she comes nose to nose with a stray cat sitting on top of her shoulder.
The cat mewls once then thunks its head against her neck, nuzzling at her shoulder.
"Christ. Do I smell like tuna or something? Spending too much time on your boat," she mutters while reaching back to absently rub its ears, bringing her attention back to the building in question.
Purrrrrr...
"Didn't think I had feline magnetism," Dom mutters with another glance back to the stray, one brow hooked upward in puzzlement. Then she looks back to Kurt. "A few things to keep in mind. We don't have a headcount, rough estimate would put their numbers as high as twenty. Since they're making their own guns they're probably armed to the nines. Don't be surprised if things start to get exceptionally messy. Stay on your toes." Once more she glances back to the window before muttering an "Okay" and carefully brushing the cat off of her shoulder. "Mind getting us inside?"
It really is hard for Kurt to get his head wrapped around the fact that it can be printed. Printed! So, in order to do what it is he does best, he pretty much shouldn't be thinking about the hows and simply get with the other 'w's.
The fact that a cat jumps upon Domino's shoulder brings a wide grin from the elf, but he knows enough to still his tail. Not going to give the cat any reason to attack it. "It must be the bourbon."
"He likes you." Those golden, featureless eyes turn towards the cat, and his tones remain easy, conversational. "Sorry.. only one furry creature allowed, cat, und that's me."
Kurt nods from his perch on the side of the building, and he looks momentarily thoughtful. Creeping slowly to a window on the second floor, one that looks darkened, he peers in, tail dangling down and twitching now. He turns about again and moves expertly back down the side of the building. His voice remains low. "I've been in such a firefight before. When I had the wound in the shoulder?" It was the one bullet from a spray of about 60 he simply couldn't avoid.
Now, Kurt leaps off the building, and with a flourish, rolls in the air before he lands lightly beside her. His tail wraps about her waist; it's the best way to travel. That way, the moment they're through, they're both on their way. "Dark upstairs or downstairs, und I'm on the ceiling, liebling?" Just checking as to how she wants to do this. Her luck, after all!
Just for kicks, Babs passes a thermal scan over the warehouse district. You never know what might turn up: extra power sources, hotspots from cooling materials, human figure distributions... Or, you know, two crouched and clinging figures alongside the wall of one of the buildings.
Babs sits up. Her fingers tick over keys and she hijacks the local cameras to adjust their pitch and yaw... and zoom in a little closer. Glowing yellow eyes. Pale white skin.
"It's the Wonder Twins..." she murmurs. "Now, what are you two up to?"
Her lips purse slightly. Domino looks loaded for bear. And the warehouse thermals suggest that, if the gun op is anywhere, it's in that building. The real question, then, becomes who hired them? Because Oracle's learned enough about Domino to know the mercenary rarely does anything without a contract.
After a moment's thought, even as she starts running trace searches to find out the answers to her question, she hits her voice scrambler and thumbs Domino's quick-dial.
The cat's clear of Dom's shoulder but he's not gone yet. She's crouching. There's knees. And combat webbing. Scratchy nylon on the jawline translates into content feline.
"Look half-pint, you can't come home with me, okay?" she mutters with a roll of her eyes. "Great, another hopeless male that's attracted to dangerous women. Go find a Siamese or something, I hear they're real pieces of work."
With Kurt down on the ground beside her she motions through the window to the basement. It's a big place, full of old machinery, boxes, drums, the usual assortment of run-down junk. "Get is down there away from the lights. If they post sentries like they should have they'll be at ground level or the second floor. We don't want to get caught in a firefight on the stairs, there's nowhere to move around there."
What's one more interruption for the evening? Now Dom's phone is buzzing at her! Frowning she flicks it out in her off-hand and unlocks the screen. She's about to ignore the call but something..stays her thumb...
Maybe it's Felix loving on the armored toe of her boot. She doesn't really know.
Out comes the Bluetooth headset, hooking it around her ear before taking the call. "Three seconds to identify yourself." Because, y'know. She's busy.
Kurt stares balefully at the cat, and he mutters softly in German. It's not that he doesn't like cats, it's not! It's just.. okay. He's more of a dog person.
Lifting his head, those yellow eyes blink. "I'm not attracted to you because you're dangerous, liebling. It's because--"
Bzzzt
Kurt pauses and pats himself down quickly, just to make sure that it's not his phone. Not that he gets too many calls. The occasional text, sure! But call?
"Down, und in the basement. In the dark. Ja.."
That tail is there now, and he's ready to go- even as she answers the phone. For a second, there's an interrupt in the signal as Hell simply doesn't have any cell towers!
It is to the basement they head with the pop of *bamf*, brimstone and sulfur permeates the immediate area. The moment they land in the darkness, Kurt effectively disappears into shadow, falling into invisibility.
Oracle's digivoice should be identification enough. "Care to tell me what you're doing in my city, loaded for bear and walking into a Makerbot gun manufacturing operation?" Her question is likely an even better identifier. "Don't tell me you're planning on something messy. Not in Gotham. We have a deal, after all..."
She scans some of the intel her program starts collating. "Mobsters, Domino? Really? Better not let Huntress find out. She'll take even greater exception than I do."
A beat.
"And how is Herr Wagner tonight? Is he in on this, too, or just trailing along for kicks?"
"Not referring to you," Domino mutters sidelong back to Kurt. She's had..other..issues with people liking her because she's not a nice person. It really does take all kinds.
Aw, Hell... Yeah, she knows who's calling. "Shodan, hey!" she all too cheerily replies in a softened tone, now that they're in the basement and all.
(I am not going to let an electronically masked voice interrupt my contract... And damnit, where did Kurt run off to? Creeps me out when he does that.)
"Oh, you know. Just helping take out some of the trash. I didn't think you'd mind so I didn't want to bother you with a call."
Yeah, sure.
"Hey. We had a deal when I'm directly supporting your crew. This job didn't come through you. Normally I'd be pissed that you're edging in on my work but in your case I'll make an exception." Pause. "Mobsters, are they really? I didn't know."
Keeping low and behind cover Dom slinks closer to the group of men, some sitting around playing with various weapons and some doing the actual work of printing and assembling. Two more are sitting off to one side having a drink. Miller Lite. These guys really have no taste.
"He's a bit nervous but well," she continues on as though sharing a perfectly casual conversation with a relative. "He's kinda like my seeing-eye demon, he makes sure I only use excessive force when it's really necessary."
Kurt catches Domino's identifying the men as mobsters, and he cants his head- not that anyone can see, of course. He waits, his tail silently swinging. "Ah. Because I think you have quite a few other things to recommend you- Seeing eye demon? Was?"
At least now she can work out where he is from the direction of his voice. On the ceiling, and he moves hand over hand silently such that he'll be poised so that he can drop right on top of the table and scare the crap out of the thugs. Like a giant fuzzy blue spider.. okay, demon.
"Uh-huh," Oracle replies, dryly. It's amazing, really, how the androgynous digital tones are sometimes so good at obscuring Oracle's natural intonation and at other times so good at emphasizing it. Sure, Domino didn't know the contract was from Mobsters. Sure, she didn't.
"Well, I suggest you listen to him on this occasion, too, then," the Voice-From-On-High says evenly. She smiles sharply, though Domino can't see it. She can likely hear it, though. "Do that for me and I'll make this as much of a milkrun for you as I can." There's a lot she can do to wifi-enabled mooks, after all. "Otherwise, I'll forward both your descriptions to the Bat and the Commissioner and scramble a whole phalanx of pandas with cherries on top to SWAT at you." Despite the fact she's perfectly aware Little Boy Blue can 'port them out of there before the SWAT ever arrives.
(Oh, there he is.)
Domino passes a toothy grin upward to Kurt but stops short of giving him the green light to carry forward with their plan. More business to tend to. (There's always something, isn't there?)
'Shodan's' got more than enough to threaten with. True, these two could be done and gone long before Gotham's finest manage to roll on in. That's not what she's concerned about. Or Gordon (she's helped save him at least once, already.) Or Batman (she's shot a rocket at him, already.) The thing that she's most concerned about has nothing to do with everyone else and everything to do with the mechanized voice in her ear.
Don't piss off the guardian angels.
A faint sigh starts off her response, pinching the bridge of her nose with her off-hand. (The contract didn't say everyone here had to be killed, Domino.) "Yeah. Alright. I'm rocking proper ammo but I'll try to pull my punches."
Try to.
With that matter out of the way she looks up to Kurt once more. One hand motion should tell him that she's going to cut around to the right. The next hand sign should (hopefully) line him up to bamf right into the center of their operation in exactly thirty seconds.
He can take it from there.
"How are you for visuals?" she asks The Voice while shifting position. "You know. Just in case there's nothing good on TV tonight."
It's true. If needed, they could be hundreds of miles away in the amount of time it took for them to start their drive to their location. It wouldn't be a comfortable ride for his passenger, mind, but it's not impossible. By any stretch of the imagination.
Still, as he's not privvy to the information, there's nothing that needs response. But all that would be needed is a word. Nothing more.
It's that sigh and gesture that brings his attention off of the mobsters and back towards the merc, though now, he doesn't say a word. Nor can his expression be seen, of course.. but suffice it to say, he's a little concerned. There's something in the works and something may have been changed mid-gameplan.
Why doesn't this make him happy?
Probably because he doesn't know.. again. But, he's got trust.
He's still got faith.
The hand motions are seen, and looking back at the targets, there's a glimmer of yellow from his hiding spot. It's all he'll give; even if he's hidden more than sufficiently.
T-30 seconds and counting. His tail moves slowly back and forth as he hangs upon the ceiling there.. hidden in those blessed shadows.
This? This will be fun.
Oracle chuckles softly -- the digital sound of it probably a little creepy. "The best thing about innovative young punks trying to be badassed bad guys," she tells the merc, "is that they can't help but set their operation up with serious digital access."
There's nothing so convenient, after all, as a smart phone app that can tell a 3D printer in a remote location to start churning out 200 gun blanks for a potential customer at a moment's notice, after all. Or the remote system monitoring app that allows the same smart phone user to check his security and surveillance system.
And none of those punks, as savvy as they think they are, are up to Oracle's level of hacking.
She sets her tunnellers working and has compete control of their systems in very short order. "I got eyes and ears all over that building." Thanks, of course, to the various smart phones there she can tap into. Gotta love app-access to contact lists. "And complete control of the building's systems, too." A beat. The Voice sounds almost gleeful behind those dry, digital tones. "I love these new smart phone convenience apps."
This right here is exactly why Domino is always very careful about the types of phones that she uses, what services and programs she allows to run on the system, and how long she goes before scrapping everything and starting from scratch. It throws the cops, it throws hundreds of hero and villain types alike.
It still can't throw Oracle.
Dom knows it. It also concerns her. Which..is why she's choosing to play nice. Let this voice be an asset, not an obstacle.
The seconds are counting down in her mind, even while being spoken to. "Good deal. Primetime's about to start."
(Ten..nine..eight...)
She didn't bother with suppressors this time. She wants to make a lot of noise, cause a lot of damage. Remind these punks what they're dealing with when they're in the arms market. The stubby rifle is leveled around a pile of crates, the softly glowing red dot within its optics falling upon the back quarter of one of the armed kid's heads.
Before it drifts further down his body. Away from the vital organs.
(Goddamnit, I hate playing by someone else's rules.)
*Bamf!*
BLAM-BLAM!
Gone.
Yelling. Chairs getting thrown aside and overturned. Three of the 'kids' rush to round up important data. Exactly two cans of cheap beer fall to the concrete floor, spilling out as unoccupied hands reach for guns. Some are already primed and ready. Others sound out as they're loaded and chambered, the sounds a bit more peculiar due to their all polymer construction. It's like the world's deadliest Nerf war is about to go down.
Two... one...
BAMF!
Kurt appears right in the middle of the table around which some were sitting, shooting the shit as they piece the .. pieces. "Welcome to your nightmare.." is grinned, and the fangs make an appearance to underscore his words. His tail whips around to coil around one man at the throat, and lifts him from the seat, even as a hand reaches out to grab another by the shirt, and *bamf*...
The three of them are gone, only to *bamf* reappear on the ceiling. He hangs them there for a moment before he *bamfs* again, and once on the ground, smacks the disoriented men hard together before he drops them to the ground.
The moment those barest of seconds pass, Kurt is crouched on the floor, ready to make a leap at another-
Oracle watches as chaos erupts within the warehouse. That's one thing you can always rely on Domino for, she reflects: Noise and chaos. The woman seems to thrive on it.
The hacker starts by locking the boys out of their toys and follows that up with a brute-force upload of their data while they struggle to try to shut down the system. Of course, it will only be moments before they give up and start yanking hardware apart -- or blasting it apart, if that suits them better. But, those few moments are all she needs, since she started the process while she was talking with Domino... before the fireworks started.
Besides, unless they run those hard drives through a demagnetizer, the boys down at the Federal Building should be able to piece the data together and confirm the zip file Oracle will send them when the fireworks are over is actually genuine. All the evidence they'll need.
The sharp report of substantially large rifle rounds passing through a substantially short barrel slap against eardrums like barely contained thunderclaps. Not all of the shots go for bipedal targets, the heavy hitting power of Domino's rifle tearing holes clear through the printing gear as she goes. What passes for toner medium starts to ooze out of those wounds as a thick slate grey syrup.
Someone yells "Stop shooting the equipment!" only to have the flat screen monitor beside him get smacked off of the table by another aimed shot, prompting a heart-felt curse as the guy dives for cover.
Oracle doesn't need the printers or monitors, she just needs access to the hard drives. This works fine for Dom, they're the more difficult targets!
"Don't mind the excessive noise factor," she speaks back into her headset. I'm not killing them, I promise."
BLAM!
"Awgawd, my leg!"
"See?"
No one is sitting still. To get themselves on the market quickly these guys took current designs, things which are already cheap, popular, and easy to acquire, then worked off of them. One of their best selling models is the chunky black box design of the Ingram Mac-10. Plenty of room to reinforce it, originally chambered for a lighter .380 round, designed to be fully automatic with a ridiculously high rate of fire.
When someone touches the trigger on one of those SMGs, everyone knows it. Thirty-two rounds, gone in less than two seconds. Bullets are flying everywhere. It's a real shame they can't seem to find the right people to fire at!
Kurt leaps into the air, flipping over and over until he catches one guy who is lifting one of those single use pistols up in that hope that he'll hit something. Anything. Feet to the face, it's a thud, and the victim gets pushed back, and landed upon. Heavily, even as the gun goes flying, it's single report loud in the room.
The other gunfire now, however, causes the unarmed teleporter to take to the ceiling again, clothed in darkness as he checks the scenario. Golden orbs flicker towards Domino to be sure that she's fine; as luck will have it.
It's from the ceiling, then, that Kurt drops, even as the Mac-10 goes off.. and the elf is hard put to *bamf* out of the way of the spray. While he's fast, he's not that fast, and with the uncontrolled tapped burst, the muzzle dances and it catches the bamfer on the trailing arm as he moves one way and the recoil forces the muzzle the other. One.. two.. and there's blood, and a deep growl in response. It bites deep into and through the shoulder, and another into the meat of his upper arm.
It's another *bamf*, and the blood trail suddenly ends, only to reappear.. and Kurt lands heavily on top of the shooter, ripping the gun out of his hands with his tail.. and grabbing the man's head with his good hand, and yanks to back before he flips the man over completely.. up and over.
The next second, comes the *bamf* as the blue fuzzy elf is back on the ceiling.
Between the cameras and the phones, Oracle can get a fairly accurate look at the inside of that room. Lights are being blown out by the flying bullets, but she's got just about everything she needs off of those machines, now.
She filters the camera feed through her own 3D setup, allowing her to see a holographic representation of the room and its action -- including firing arcs -- on a glowing touchscreen table space just off to one side of her console.
"Killing power in five," she tells the merc, to prepare her.
5... "You'll have 30 seconds to restart."
4... "Use them well."
"Three... two... one... Dark."
And all electricity to the building ceases. The lights go out and the place is thrown into complete darkness.
One thing which is difficult to account for: The Bathroom Factor. At any given moment X baddies might be sitting on the John.
Domino's having a good run, up until she gets snagged in a crushing bearhug from behind. In an instant she's gone from firing upon the crowd to being lifted right off of her feet. With her existing injuries, it doesn't feel good at all.
"Well look here! Someone gave this labrat a gun!" There's a look of triumph as he brings his face in closer over her shoulder, breathing in deep. "I'm gonna have fun with--"
Sneeze.
"What th--"
Sneeze.
"I duh..huuh--haa--"
SNEEZE.
Odds of random baddie being seriously allergic to cats: 1 in 5,410. (Thank you, Felix.)
The guy has no choice but to drop the albino, his face swollen and red and his eyes and nose alike already running like mad thanks to that deep breath he claimed at cat dander ground zero.
One of his buddies is just starting to line up a shot square with Dom's chest as she's dropped.
Then the lights go out.
An instant flash of light. One feminine grunt. No more sneezing.
"Did I forget to mention that I can't see in the dark?" Domino hisses into her headset. It gives her a great idea, though. A flashbang. Twenty-five seconds to go. She'll toss it in eighteen.
Dark.
Everything is bathed in lovely, delightful darkness.
If Kurt was done with the fight, he'd be in the shadows, licking his wounds. As it is, his arm feels like it's on fire; the blood trickling is drip-drip-dripping down to the floor from his spot on the ceiling.
But now?
Domino's attacker is seen in his periphery, but as she manages to avoid the worse of it, there's another that was also drawing a bead on the woman.
It's that one that the teleporter makes the leap for, just as the dark hits.
Blessed dark.
OOOF
THUD!
The sound of a gun as it skitters across the floor can be heard, and after a couple soft thumps, Kurt's voice calls out,
"Leibling.. two-thirty.. und five o'clock.."
As Kurt comes around, those yellow eyes widen. A muzzle rises in preparation, and there's the flash, and the elf yells, "Drop!"
Oracle rather hopes Domino's luck holds out. It's a calculated risk, to be sure, but a risk nonetheless. Still, Little Boy Blue? She has no doubt he's stellar in the dark. At least, in the mostly dark that is the interior of the warehouse.
Of course, she's more hampered than they are -- though not nearly in as much danger. All she can rely on, at the moment, is cell phone tracking -- though the little radios that make up so much of mobile phone capabilities aren't nearly so hard as you'd think to adapt into a nifty little radar system. Imagine all those little phone pulses bouncing back to the various receivers -- including Dom's -- like Daredevil's natural radar telemetry. Get the right app on the phones (which Oracle has) and the right system to interpret the data (which, again, Oracle has), and it's the next best thing to visual spectrum.
"Lights on in 10... 9... 8..."
(Not good. Seriously not good. Shodan was only trying to help, Domino. You aren't kitted out like the majority of the Gothalantes.)
It sure is a good thing that she has a Nightcrawler along for the ride, huh? Pieces, falling into place, etcetera.
Targets are called out. Then a warning is given. Instinct does its trick, there's the stream of muzzlefire as one of the boxy automatic lights up in a spray of polymer bullets and polymer shell casings alike. These guys are even printing their own bullets! The lethal wall swarms clear over the albino, the steady flash of burnt propellant giving away his position.
Dom's down to pistols, though that might be even worse for the other guys. Now she's shooting twice instead of once.
A careful shot catches the guy in the arm, his empty gun falling from his numbed fingers in a yelp. Her luck is still holding out, mostly. One of the nuisances of her power is that it isn't as effective if she can't see something coming.
Pistol shots slam out in spaced intervals, erupting from completely random locations as she continues to fire and run. Then the call is given.
"Full moon!"
Someone else actually calls out "What's that supposed to mean?"
The clink of a flashbang striking the floor could easily be overlooked in the darkness. One guy overlooks it so much that he ends up tripping on the canister, knocking himself out cold on the floor.
2... 1... BAM!
It's when almost everyone else is blinded that a heavier caliber bullet punches through Dom's armor, the random shot catching her in the leg.
Kurt's not very lucky, it seems, and he's slow on the mark. The moment he calls out for his partner to drop, he's bamfing out in the need to disarm the man. This shooter was at seven. Behind her and to the left. He's on him, and throwing his punch.. and with each rapid bamf, he hits the man.. and hard. Over, and over..
The call that comes, 'Full moon' earns the merc a quick glance, and he yells, "Three o'clock.. door!" before he leaps up to the ceiling and hides his eyes in the last heartbeats of the countdown.
He's bathed in light for that second, the red blood mats his shirt, and beneath, the fur on his arm. It hangs weakly, though he's still got painful use of it. Forced, painful use.
With eyes averted, he misses the shot that wounds Domino..
Kurt's not very lucky, it seems, and he's slow on the mark. The moment he calls out for his partner to drop, he's bamfing out in the need to disarm the man. This shooter was at seven. Behind her and to the left. He's on him, and throwing his punch.. and with each rapid bamf, he hits the man.. and hard. Over, and over..
The call that comes, 'Full moon' earns the merc a quick glance, and he yells, "Three o'clock.. door!" before he leaps up to the ceiling and hides his eyes in the last heartbeats of the countdown.
He's bathed in light for that second, the red blood mats his shirt, and beneath, the fur on his arm. It hangs weakly, though he's still got painful use of it. Forced, painful use.
With eyes averted, he misses the shot that wounds Domino..
The gunmakers -- those that are still standing -- are blinded by the flashbang. Probably deafened, too. Three seconds after it goes off, the emergency lights come on. The warehouse is in disarray and it's likely only a couple of them are still standing... hands over eyes or ears or feeling around in the eye-scrunched dark.
With any luck, the Wonder Twins will be able to subdue them.
"Pandas are 5 minutes out."
"I resemble that remark, you know," Domino practically hisses into her headset.
Five minutes. Way, way too much fire still being thrown about. Both of them are injured (though thank goodness her armor can stop a .380 cold.) Time for a change of plans. Two concussion grenades are pulled out, brought special just for this contract for the purpose of blasting apart computer hardware. Though rather than throw them at the computers, she just throws them wherever.
"'Crawler, exfil!"
She knows it's coming. The guy hasn't lost his power. She hunkers down, waits, and--
*Bamf!*
--comes outside of the building alongside Nightcrawler as those grenades go off.
Odds of hitting a resonance frequency within an old structure suddenly weakened by a pair of localized explosions: 1 in 93,475.
A large part of the first floor up and drops on top of the printing operation, trapping the thugs within just enough rubble.
Not far away is one startled alleycat, leaping across a garbage bin with such bravado that it falls onto its side and spills some of its contents across the parking lot. Rolling across the pavement from that bin? A can of blaze orange spray paint.
Domino takes the can, still with some paint left inside, and sprays 'Baddies Inside' on the slightly ruined building before flinging the can aside.
One look at Kurt tells her everything she needs to know. He's not going to want to teleport all the way back to the New York harbor in his current state.
"Still think it was a bad idea to take the car?"
The moment Kurt is given the 'command', the merc's 'seeing eye demon' teleports beside her, and with a loop of his tail, brings the pair of them outside in the next heartbeat. Upon reaching the other side, he goes into a crouch as if to relieve some of the pressure.. and as he does, he catches the blood trail on the leg. Before he can say anything about the injury, the concussion grenades go off, and loudly. It's enough that he has to turn away, trying hard not to put hands over his ears.
Finally, he straightens enough, and catching her with that paint can, makes a face. "As if there wasn't en-" and true to Oracle's word, the sirens are approaching from the middle distance. That.. that bothers him a great deal, and his tail comes around again to coil around her waist; he's game, even if that arm is hanging a little stiffly.
"Ja.. because we're going to be bleeding in it."
Category:Log