2014.10.27 - Gnat Attack

"Well you can tell him that if he doesn't approve the operation I'll file a grievance on my patient's behalf... Right... No, absolutely not..."
Not every doctor would use his break to call up a representative from an HMO and threaten legal action, but then most doctors aren't Donald Blake. Of course, Donald himself probably wouldn't have done something like this even last week, but lately he's feeling a lot more empowered to make change.
As he sits at the concrete table with his uneaten sandwich and barely-sipped soft drink off to one side, he taps his fingers frantically against the rough surface. Clearly, he's been getting more worked up as the phone call has progressed.
"Fine. You tell him to call me himself and explain why he's denying coverage." He taps the screen and the call is ended. But it's not until he's taken a long deep breath that he feels like making a second attempt at eating his sandwich.
J'onn doesn't discuss Martian reproduction. He is, however, entirely too aware at this point about human reproduction - and the dangers sometimes faced by the female. Which is why he's descending rapidly towards the hospital with an extremely, extremely pregnant woman held very tenderly in his arms. Judging by the noise she's making, it's probably the only way she wasn't having that baby in the back of a New York cab. He slows only to make sure the ER doors open for him before landing at a run in the area. "I do believe we have need of a midwife."
A few blocks down Button, Delete, and Panic come to a soft landing on a high-rise, with a clear view of the bustling hospital and the large, decorative pond in front of it. Setting herself down on the edge of the roof Button starts to fiddle with the gauntlet on her left arm while she talks to the robot, "OK, boys lets see if your smaller siblings can do the job I've designed them for." After a few taps on her gauntlet compartment on the robots arms pop open and hundreds upon hundred of gnat size dots come flying out and start making their way towards the hospital. Something that Panic, for one, is not happy about, "But Mistress. Why couldn't we just put them in a jar! They're so /squirmy/ inside my arm!"
It doesn't take him long to polish off the sandwich. Apparently arguments make the frail-looking man hungry. As he starts working on his soft drink, he is silently thankful that there are no emergencies happening to break his sense of tranquility. Just for once, things are quiet, and he savors the moment while it lasts.
Beside him, resting against the table, is the most gnarled-looking walking stick that anyone has likely seen in a few hundred years. It looks completely incongruous with his shirt, tie, and lab coat ensemble, but most people have chalked it up to some sort of idiosyncrasy.
As J'onn sets the woman down, a couple of ER techs move to help her into a room. At least that's one person likely to be leaving the ER happier than she entered. For right now, J'onn hesitates in the middle of the maelstrom, shields almost entirely up against the empathic onslaught inevitable in a place like this. No. She'll be okay. There's no sense staying around here, at least not for any length of time...
The 'gnats' cover the distance between the roof Button and her companions are on and the hospital in a very short amount of time. As they fly over the pond they disperse and start flitting around all the people moving around the front of the hospital. A few of the gnats land on the soda can Donald is drinking from and suddenly there's a soft 'pop' and the can is gone. A second later its falling through the air barely missing J'onn's head.
From her rooftop perch Button has brought some binoculars out of her purse and is using them to watch the action. After a few seconds she lowers the binocular and taps away at her gauntlet again. "Picking targets that are too small, we already know they work on small stuff..." Then she frowns up at Panic, "And that's all in your electronic brain. You're not programmed to feel anything moving inside you interior compartments. There is no way you could have felt them moving inside your arm."
Of course it couldn't last. Don swats ineffectively at the gnats for a few seconds before his drink disappears. "Sonofa!... huh?"
Although there's clearly some weirdness going on, Donald Blake isn't particularly in a hurry to change into his alter ego. Instead, he just grabs his cane, looking around to make sure that nobody is watching him. They aren't, but he gets up and hobbles away to a less-crowded area anyway.
J'onn...catches the soda can that just almost fell on his head. Without even crushing it. He glances upwards to see who dropped it as he sets it on a nearby table, but he's tense, mind scanning for actual threats. This could just be a prank...but he's not going to count on it.
In response to Button's tapping on her gauntlet the gnats start forming slightly bigger groups. One particular group lands all over a large concrete planter full of late blooming flowers. With a bigger 'pop' this time it disappears and appears about 10 feet up in the air and a few feet off to the side and starts dropping, gnat peeling off of it and flying away. Another group of the black, flying motes lands all over a little kid in a leg cast that's being helped out of the emergency room by his mother. Instead of a 'pop' a screeched, "TIMMY!" marks his disappearance, only to have him about about 3 feet over the decorative pond.
On her roof Button lets out a happy, "Yesss!" ass the gnats go to work on bigger targets than just a soda can. "And it worked on people too! This is turning out to be a good trial run."
From his semi-private vantage point, Dr. Donald Blake has finally decided that his services are no longer required here. It's clearly a job for the Other Guy. Which is why a bolt of lightning suddenly strikes the ground out of view of everyone, accompanied by the loud boom of thunder. In the spot where the crippled doctor used to kneel, the dramatically-attired figure of Thor now slowly rises to his feet.
With a twitch of his mighty leg muscles, he leaps all the way up to the hospital's roof, getting a good vantage point of the goings-on below.
Which means he's close enough that when J'onn dives for the fountain to catch the kid, he splashes into it, sending water flying in all directions, splashing a couple of nurses. Who are backing away rapidly. Whatever's going on... "We've got a telekinetic prankster," J'onn says simply, pretty much handing Tim to one of the nurses. "Try and get this area cleared as best you can."
The happiness passes quickly as Button starts to realize the fine control isn't there yet. Putting the binoculars down again she taps a few more commands into he gauntlet. Down by the hospital the gnats cluster around one of the nurses that was helping J'onn with the kid. She starts an "U..." that is completed as she pops up ten stories up right in front of Thor but missing the roof by about 5 feet, "...gh!" She looks like a human version of Willey Coyote as she has just enough time to look down then back up at Thor, her eyes flying wide open. and her yell starts to fade immediately as she starts to fall, "Aieeee..."
Elsewhere Button is nowhere near as happy as she was a few minutes ago, "Damn it! Where's the fine control!? Stupid gnats missed the roof!" And she starts to frantically tap away at her gauntlet, adjusting control settings and completely ignoring the fact that her test just dropped a human being ten stories.
Of course, Thor is quick to leap to the fair maiden's rescue. He even calls her 'fair maiden.'
"Fear not, fair maiden, thou art as safe in the arms of the Thunderer as thou wouldst be amongst the undead warriors who feast in the hallowed halls of Valhalla!" Apparently he talks like that now...
He catches her in mid-air, using the momentum of his mystical mallet to offset the pull of gravity and allow the two of them to float harmlessly to the ground. When they land, she looks as if she can't decide between screaming and swooning, but ultimately she chooses the latter. Thor sets her gently on the ground.
"And now the Mighty Thor shalt sniff out the foul miscreant responsible for this jackanapery! So swears the Mighty Thor, wielder of the Mystical Mallet Mjolnir!"
So, Thor rescues the nurse. J'onn, assuming telekinesis, is making the understandable mistake of scanning the area for psionically active minds. Only when he fails to find one will he consider technology, but...for now, he's looking for a mischievous telekinetic. Got to be one around here somewhere.
As J'onn starts searching around for his telekinetic a large amount of the gnats land on him. Once again there's a loud 'POP' and a second later J'onn is standing right next to where Thor had been standing on the hospital roof before he rescued the falling nurse.
Down on at the ground level the swooning nurse is coming to. She gets to her hands and knees just in time to get hit by the same effect everyone that's been teleported by the gnats are feeling, a massive wave of dizziness and nausea. Sadly, Thor is just in the right place to get his feet and lower legs covered in what was once upon a time the nurse's lunch.
On her roof a few blocks away Button can't hold back an attack of the giggles, which would have sent her falling off her perch and down to the ground if Panic didn't have lightning reflexes. The smaller robot manages to catch its boss by the back of her jeans with a scared bark of, "Mistress! Be careful!"
Hammer firmly in hand, The Mighty Thor looks hither and yon for any signs of malfeasance. However, he is loath to leave an unconscious woman lying undefended when there are potential hazards all about. But as Alexander Pope warned us all, there will always be a punishment for good deeds.
As the punishment for his inherent goodness begins spilling down his leg and filling up his boot, the Son of Odin can't help but react unfavorably. "Cease thy retching, woman! I like it not!" He quickly steps back, but the damage is already done. "Verily! It is as if I have stepped in one of the fiery rivers of Muspelheim!"
This emphatic, and archaic, declaration doesn't appear to make the woman feel any better, and her embarrassment shows. This makes Thor feel bad.
"Be not ashamed, I prithee. For it is not thou who is to be blamed for the vile malfeasance seeping into the Mighty Thor's leather boots. 'Tis the fault of a varlet most foul, upon whom the Lord of Storms wilt surely be avenged!"
But in the meantime, there is still vomit on his boot. He can't very well go off into battle like that, so he takes a few steps back from the woman, and blasts his own leg with a bolt of lightning that would probably be strong enough to flash-fry a whale. After this, his leg is miraculously clean.
"See? All is well, fair maiden. And now, I shall summon the wind and the rain to clear the air of this trickery!"
J'onn...is not nearly as badly affected by the teleport, but he does stagger as he appears. And lose his concentration on the scan he was doing. "Neat trick," he grumbles. Now he's even more convinced he's dealing with a psychic, one who intentionally teleported him to stop him from finding them.
Button lets out a little shriek as she gets a serious wedgie. "Put me down, Panic! I can fly you idiot robot!" Once she's firmly back on the roof she wiggles around and tugs at her jeans while Panic says, "I'm sorry, Mistress." the same way a surly nine-year-old would when they feel they've been unfairly reprimanded. And also sounding like a nine-year-old, Delete sniggers behind his huge robotic hands.
Once Button has finished taking care of her wardrobe malfunction she sits back down at the edge and says, "OK, lets step it up a notch." After a few more taps on her gauntlet the gnats flying around the front of the hospital all gather up into one batch and swarm onto an SUV that has just pulled up to the emergency room entrance. Before the people in the SUV can get out its disappeared into thin air. Just like all the other disappearing things this afternoon it reappears a second later. Over the center of the pond, and that pond is deep enough for the whole thing to sink into it. Far away Button crows, "Bull's eye! Perfect shot!"
Grabbing Mjolnir by its leather thong, Thor begins to swing the hammer around his head. Slowly at first, but it speeds up rapidly until both the hammer and his arm are only a blur of motion. As the hammer spins, the wind in the area begins to gradually pick up. Rain clouds form overhead, and the distant sounds of thunder quickly grow closer.
"I command the wind and the rain to purify this place of healing...." His voice is loud and commanding, loud enough to be heard by pretty much everyone within a two block radius. People quickly begin running toward whatever shelter they can find, causing a bit of a traffic jam near the hospital doors.
"The wind... the rain... and... the LIGHTNING!" Right on cue, a bolt of lightning flies right into the cloud of gnats, followed shortly by a loud thunderclap.
While Thor...tries an EMP? J'onn dives into the pond after the inhabitants of the SUV, vanishing under the water. No bubbles...he must hold his breath very well. If Martians breathe. It seems that they do, but can one ever be sure?
The lighting hits the cloud of gnats and something strange happens. Instead of the insects popping into a could of vaporized bugs the lightning bolt splits into hundred upon hundreds of tiny bolts, jumping from one gnat to another. For a moment it looks like there's a cloud of lighting floating slight off to the side of the pond then it all fades away, leaving lots of char itty, bitty pieces of metal to patter down into the mud.
On her roof Button cringes a little bit as the Thunderer's voice reaches her. As soon as she sees the cloud of lightning she gets up, stuffs her binoculars back into her purse and starts to float up into the air, "Time to go boys. Before the goody two shoes figure out exactly what was going on and come chasing after. But all in all, a good first run for the Port Gnats." 
You paged Donald Blake with 'If you decide to look at the gnats one or two might be in good enough shape for Stark to be able to tell that they were made by the same person that made the wasps that invaded his tower a few months back.'
Suddenly, Thor's arm stops in place, and his hammer stops with it. As quickly as the storm began, it ends, and the rain clouds flee from the sky.
The people around are pretty much soaked, but none of them have been harmed.
"... I think that worked."
J'onn emerges from the pond with a bedraggled person pretty much under each arm. They sputter as he sets them down. "Apparently," he informs Thor. "Thank you for the assistance."
"Verily, thou art a stalwart warrior. Let us be friends from this day forth!" Thor waves a hand at the green-skinned manhunter, a wide smile plastered on his ridiculously manly, yet impeccably shaven face.
"We shall celebrate our triumph with a flagon of Asgard's finest mead, then we shall sing songs long into the night and hurl rocks from the top of a mountain as is our cus.... Oh shit!"
Thor looks at the setting sun, and is suddenly aware that he has somewhere more important to be. "Sorry man, maybe some other time. I'm suuuuper late for a really complicated surgery. See you la--er... The Son of Odin bids you farewell!"
Thor tosses his hammer into the air, quickly grabbing it by the thong. Within seconds, he is launched all the way over the other side of the hospital. A few seconds after that, another bolt of lightning hits the ground where he stood, and Donald Blake begins hobbling toward the hospital's rear entrance.
Interesting. With the situation dealt with, J'onn lifts off, cape dripping water as he flies into the sky. Probably to find somewhere to dry off...
Category:Log