2013-02-25 Little Office of Horrors

Dusk has just sauntered its way over the landscape of New Troy, Metropolis. One particularly area, a small, fenced office building is nestled within the mixed business and residential neighborhoods, although it holds its own space. And its own private security. To most, this is just another corporate office building, another funny-word logo pasted onto a sign... in fact, most residents here haven't given much thought to what goes on here, and even if they knew, they still may not think to care.
Tonight, things will be different. Miss Pamela Isley, finally emerging after four days of relentless, meticulous research at the Gotham City library, has learned more than how to kill two police officers and terrify students. She's studied and profiled, assembling a list of organizations that she's found grievously offensive in the name of plants. Her mood swings have been obvious, sometimes shifting from a brilliant mastermind to a childish, weeping, emotional mess. Sometimes methodical, sometimes desperate. Her companion, the unflappable Deadpool, has surely noticed. Pamela dragged him along onto this particular infiltration, not even with a promise of bounty. Just references to destruction and the coy batting of eyelashes was all it took.  Unsure of exactly what lie inside the facility before them, she was certain their research wasn't going to be respectful to the plants she deeply cared for... and that's all that really mattered to her.
 
Under cover of darkness, a hooded figure gets to the roof of the building with a well placed arrow and a line. Once up there, he pulls another arrow from his quiver but does not knock it. Instead, it flashes to light as an acetlyne arrow head. He begins work on getting in through one of the air shafts as quietly as he can. The lock snaps, he flips the lid open, and slips inside the building.
 
Deadpool doesn't do the whole 'silent infiltration' thing. Well, he /does/, but only when it's not as awesome or hilarious to break in loudly and messily. The front door, sure, pick a lock and sneak in. Once /inside/, though, it's all 'Echo, echo, echo'! and references to his time in the Greek system. 
A huge boot slams right into a door with clearly un-necessary force- it was just a hollowcore door, and Deadpool gets his foot stuck. "Hah, take that, door!" he grunts, struggling with the nefarious portal. "I sure showed you." He hops on his other foot, fumbling around, his flashlight bobbling awkwardly. He reaches down and jiggles the doorknob. The door opens, and Deadpool hops through the door, foot still stuck. "Remind me again, what we're looking for?" he asks Ivy.
 
The last 200 yards to the building has been awkward, and to say that the banter between Ivy and Deadpool has exacerbated her frantic nerves would be an understatement. She was relieved, however, that Wade was clearly disinterested in sneaking in. She, too, preferred the dramatic route, and made short work of the security guard, as he pathetically flailed for his police radio. An articulated, animated vine pulled it out of his hand, followed by the gruesome spectacle of his body getting thrashed about the parking lot until lay unconscious and bloody.
"Research, technology... test subjects. This facility has been genetically extracting a variety of botanical compounds, but their research has been quoted frequently as possibly illegal, and questionable," Pamela explained, her words echoing into the hallway ahead. She considered the possibility that Wade had stopped listening after a few words in, so she stopped for a moment, and whispered to him, "Look for shiny things."
 
Above them, Green Arrow is working through the air ducts when he hears the great crash of the front door from down below. He winces behind the domino mask he is wearing. "So much for in and out," he mutters to himself. He finds a grate and pries it open. He drops down into an office space as quietly as he can. Maybe all the guards will head towards the noise and completely ignore him. Granted, getting out of here is going to be tricky then.
He moves towards the office door and cracks it open, looking up and down the hallway.
 
Deadpool is a gentleman, and lets Ivy go through the door before he falls over. He's up again in a flash, bouncing on his toes, and shuts the door behind them, just as Ollie peeks down the window after them.
"Ooh, shinies. Me gusta shiny." He shines his flashlight around the office, though for the most part, it wanders towards Ivy's derriere. "So, shiny what now? I mean, lab equipment, precious metals, explosives, Bea Arthur framed photographs, what?" he asks, idly paging through some loose papers. He pokes at a dead plant. "Biochemical components, lab notebooks... hey, does this make me look fat?" He spreads his arms, having donned a white lab coat. "And if someone sees us, I can be all 'Hey, it's cool! I'm doing science!'" he says, spreading his arms and totally ignoring the massive pile of weaponry strapped to every available limb.
 
While Pamela and Deadpool had no idea what exactly they were looking for, they did seem to have a rather unexplainably intuitive sense of where a place keeps its goods. After a few hallway twists and turns, they stumble upon a particularly darkened, sealed room. A rich, complicated-looking electronic lock was placed over a computer panel and an unfathomable number of scanning devices and room temperature controls. Whatever was in this room was probably important.  "Here," Ivy barked, immediately realizing her volume went up a notch for no particular reason. Lowering it, she directed Wade: "Let's find out what this is."
 
Green Arrow spots the two nefarious ne'er do wells as they make their way along the hallways. Not like Deadpool is really trying to be inconspicuous any way. He slips out of the office behind them and keeps up against the wall. He moves along after them slowly trying to just keep them in sight without getting too close and trip them off. Time to see what they were doing and perhaps get the information he was after at the same time.
 
"Oh, /this/ shiny? I can do this." Deadpool walks up to the safe and taps on the door, then the frame, then examines the locking mechanism, rubbing his chin judiciously. He leans his head sideways and starts tapping on the buttons of the electronic lock.
"Hmm. So, FYI- you can't pick these kinda locks by ear." He frowns at the safe. "Then again, I couldn't pick the other kind by ear, anyway. By the inverse property, I should be able to pick this by ear."
 He nods sagely and digs out something from one of his many pockets. It looks like putty. It smells like chemicals. But it /says/ Semtex on the little box. "Ooooooonnn top of spageeeeeettii...," he sings. Badly. "All covered with cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese." He starts applying the semtex to the seams of the safe. "I lost my poor meeeeeaatballlll.... when somebody sneeeeeeeeezed!"
 
Ivy needed only about six seconds of contemplation to realize she ought to find some cover. The two large satchels she's carrying are quickly opened and revealed, and two small, thorned plants, in-hand, begin their incomprehensibly quick growth before they're even entirely out of the bag.
About a dozen vines suddenly spring outward, darting in a myriad of random directions... one of which was coincidentally and fairly close to Green Arrow. The sharp tips embedded themselves into the surfaces they touched, and the two that hit the ceiling quickly began to slice the weakly, foam paneling above, flakes of drywall falling onto Deadpool's back. After another 30 seconds, Ivy had ascended a floor, and her voice could be heard shouting, "Try not to damage what's inside!"
 
"Oh hell," Green Arrow says perhaps a bit too loudly as he sees Deadpool begin to apply the putty to the lock. He begins to kick his feet out to push himself backwards even as he is struck across the leg by one of Ivy's vines. He lets out a curse as he tries to push away and leaves a ripped bit of pant and a nice gash along his calf in the process. He tries to get back far enough before the explosion will go off.
 
"Everyone stand back!" Deadpool shouts, wiring up the detonator with un-necessarily frantic motions. "She's gonna blow! I warned you!" He looks up at Ivy, then turns and exits the office with a flying sidekick through the already broken door. This time, it goes flying clear off the hinges, smashing into the other side of the hallway. It looks pretty ninja.
Deadpool turns and spots Ollie and blanches. "Uh." He holds the detonator in one hand, then holds it dramatically aloft, and extends a palm in the universal 'halt' sign towards the Green Arrow. "It's all right!" he booms. "Stand back, sir! I'm about to attempt SCIENCE!"
Click.
BOOM!
 
*BEWP BEWP BEWP* - Alarms began to suddenly rebound across the facility like a sonic typhoon, accompanied by pretty, red, flashing lights to complete the effect. The piercing sound was nearly painful, though not incapacitating. In the distance, some movements could be heard... in all likelihood some sort of security officers.
"Drat! You idiot#@!" Ivy screamed, the sound of machinery being kicked violently could be heard from above. Ivy had lashed out on a photocopier.
Swooping back down, via the aide of her viney pals, who were continuing to grow at freakish speeds, tearing through rooms on the 2nd floor. Strange, thick, fog-like gas poured out of previously sealed room, filling the entire area with a thick, pungent smell of algae. Suddenly, visibility was massively hindered.
 
Even as Deadpool issues his proclamation, Green Arrow flips over and covers his head while tucking into a fetal position. The boom goes off but rather then get quiet after that, the alarms start going off as well. Green Arrow is struck by falling ceiling and bits of plaster as the overly done explosive goes off. He is shoved along the floor by vines and the force of the explosion. He slowly gets to his feet, still covered in dust and some blood, as Ivy swings back down. He is pulling the bow from his shoulder as he calls out, "I'm not the biggest fan of these folks either, but you two are going to..." What they are going to have to do is lost as the fog obscures his view and then begins to swallow him up as well.
 
"Who is Drat, and what did he mess up?" Deadpool demands of Ivy, wandering back into the office. There's a click-whirr of little lenses as he dons a pair of high-tech goggles. "And stop assaulting innocent office equipment!" he adds, pointing a finger at Ivy. "It never did anything to you!" he adds, striding towards the safe.
It looks blackened, but unbowed, the semtex having thrown black streaks everywhere it'd burned.
Deadpool eyes the safe, rubbing his fingers together with a shrewd, calculating focus.
"HIYAA!" he screams, launching into a spinning ninja whirly kick of death- and stopping a half inch shy of kicking the safe. He leans forward and gently thumps his fist on top of the safe. The door simply falls off the safe, hitting the tile with a crackling thump.
 
Pamela Isley was unnerved by the alarms, and the voice of Green Arrow stopped her in her tracks. That wasn't a security guard, or an employee. Who the heck was it? Turning to look, the massive thick of fog blocked him from her gaze. Things weren't shaping up like she'd expected.
"Stay out of our way and we'll stay out of yours," was the only reasonable thing that she could think of to respond to the mysterious figure in the room, her voice managing to stay relatively calm, despite a subtle hint of crazy lurking in there.
Poison Ivy, despite her powers, was under no delusion that she only had a short window of time before she needed to escape this scene. While Wade was a highly useful accomplice, she hadn't learned to respect or trust him--if she needed to leave him here, she would. Walking backwards towards the creepy, dark, previously-sealed room, she looked into the fog behind, fearing that this unknown person would ruin her plans here.
 
There is a sound of metal hitting metal and a flare erupts within the fog. It is a glowing hazy aura as if a pixie was flirting around in the mist. Green Arrow holds one end of the flare arrow as he tries to make his way towards the noises. "Afraid I can't really do that. See, they would take away my union card if I didn't at least try to stop you guys, and I'm very Pro Union."
 
 "Wow. I mean- dude, are you like, amateur night, or what?" comes Deadpool's disembodied voice. "'Hey, I can't see what I'm doing in a dense fog! Let me turn on a flare!'" He mocks Ollie's voice and tone, his own position difficult to determine. With bare more warning than a whistle of noise, easily concealed by the growing plants, a knife soars through the air, aimed squarely at Ollie's improvised flare. "And please- please tell me you aren't some lame-ass superhero. I'm a good guy! This is strictly mercenary work. I'm a Big Damn Hero!" he affirms, with the tone of someone posing heroically. Possibly flexing his glutes in Ivy's direction.  You know it, baby!
 
Lingering uncomfortably in the doorway, she decided she ought to do *something* as she saw the light of Green Arrow approach. Scanning about, she noticed that a few of the environmental controls had managed to miraculously remain intact despite the explosion. After a few fumbled attempts, and the blessed luck that the instrument wasn't too difficult to ascertain, a metallic-clicking whirring of a fan began to sound. Almost immediately, some of the fog began to pull back into the room behind Pamela, and this would continue for the next thirty seconds to reveal... the ridiculous mess that Wade and Ivy had left in the room they were in. Walls, tables, desks, computers--everything mangled into pieces. Her eyes blinked wildly, and as she could now see Green Arrow for the first time, she knew one thing: he was probably some kinda superhero. "Double-drat," she offhandedly mumbled to herself. She lept into the room behind her--since she had nothing left to lose, she decided to find out what the heck was in here.
And so she did. It wasn't pretty. The long, narrow room was full of computer panels, glass counter-tops, oven-looking chambers with dense, random flora samples strewn across the room. Instrumentation was everywhere, and in the middle of the room was a giant-sized cactus--sliced and hacked from every angle.
"Oh...my...god..." she wailed. While this swath of abused plants was enough to send tears streaming down Ivy's cheeks, she seemed to ignore one more important detail. Odd schematics were pasted all around the cactus, many depicting the genetic code of a human. One had the picture of a baby.
 
As he hears Deadpool's voice, Green Arrow throws the flare arrow upward and drops into a crouch letting the knife fly over his head. His hands fly back to his quiver and an arrow is pulled and knocked quickly. "Care to try for two?" he calls out as he aims at Deadpool. The fan begins to suck the fog away and his eyes are watering a little bit from the fog so he sees Deadpool, but no clear shot. He holds the aim as best he can, but then he hears the wail and his arrow wavers on the bow.
 
 WHACHKACH. Deadpool's about as fast on the draw as Ollie is, and he's got a pair of massive pistols aimed right at Ollie. "Dude! You've got a bow and /arrow/?!" he squeals. "I want one! I met this chick and she was all 'you can't play with mine' and I'm all 'but I'll give you a gun!' and she's all 'this is special, blah blah blah' and then she wouldn't give me her phone number, and I mean what's UP with chicks in this town, amirite?" Deadpool asks, standing with one ankle crossed over the other and gesturing vaguely with a pistol. Ivy's wails go ignored. "I mean, Ivy's hot, but she's got this whole 'lady with a garden' vibe going, which is marginally better than a crazy cat lady- then again, there's Catwoman, and you /know/ you'd hit that, right?" He leans into Ollie's frame and ribs him comically. "Amirite? Rite?"
 
The alarms never stopped and the noises only got worse.  A freakish, crunching sound of wood could be heard throughout the building. To anyone with any modicum of detective skills, they'd probably assume this was Ivy's vines, continuing to tear at the building... and they'd be right. The security officers outside were being greeted by the first wave of police--three cop cars. They were all too scared to go inside based on the sounds being generated by the walls and floors being ripped apart, but one of them had the bright idea to pull the security footage from cameras.
Pamela was going into a frantic destruction spree, smashing everything and anything that looked important, punching and smashing computer equipment, gadgets, microscopes, and tools, ranting all the while about how humanity would see its end. Soon! This rage carried on for minutes, and she only stopped once, just long enough to save a few plants that caught her eye from the lab, some lab journals, and an external harddrive.
 
"You are not alright in the head, are you?" Green Arrow asks of Deadpool as the merc stands there waving the gun but talking as if they were in the health club locker room. He begins to get back up to his feet slowly, but not dropping his aim just yet. He looks out towards the vines going like crazy and then towards the office in time to see Pamela go for the hard drive. "Hold it there, Audrey II. I'll take the harddrive. This has to be more than just being a vandalization." He moves to try and get past Deadpool and towards Ivy.
 
BAMBAMBAM. Deadpool gestures with the now smoking gun, three bullet holes gouging the floor around Ollie's front foot. "Ok, for one- the humor thing? That's /my/ shtick. /I'm/ the funny guy," he informs Ollie. The other gun stays aimed directly at Ollie's chest. "Second- can I /please/ borrow your bow and arrow?" he whines, jumping up and down like a kid. "I didn't shoot you or anything! I mean, you seem like a cool guy, and so I totally didn't shoot you in the foot, so that counts for something, right? Right?" he asks.
"Ivy!" he shouts to the redhead. "He won't share his toys! Should I shoot this guy, or is he another anti-hero on a crusade for his own unique brand of morality? I get confused!" he asks the woman, as she cruises past.
 
Storming back into the room, Poison Ivy's expression was one of sorrow and venomous anger. She stopped in front of Green Arrow and Deadpool, taking only a moment to witness the two interact. She needed to be focused, she reminded herself. Speaking to Wade, while looking at Arrow, she spoke with the tone a mother might do to a child that needed to come inside for dinner: "The time has come to bid adieu." After a quick pause, she pushed her face towards Arrow, sizing him up. After reflecting on this moment later, Pamela still wasn't sure why she decided she liked him, or why some part of her wouldn't attack.
"Whoever you are," she said at him commandatorily, "You'd do best to evade the storm outside." She stared at him ominously, while below the sounds of cracking and tearing wood began to grow louder, clearing making their way closer to Pamela.
 
"Yeah, but you sort of lose the humor when waving a gun," Arrow says under his breath and a glance towards Deadpool. He slips the bow back up onto his shoulder. He refocuses on Ivy. "Look, your Plantiness, just give me the hard drive. I go one way. You go the other and never the twain shall meet. I don't like the owners of this place. If they lose a bit of money cleaning up, I'm fine with that, but lets not hurt the folks out there doing their jobs and just let me get that hard drive. We all walk away happy." He doesn't move forward because the gun is still aimed at his chest.
 
"Sorry, matey." Deadpool pauses. "I don't know why I called you that. Sorry, uh, ...arrowy. Damn. I had something for this." He edges towards Ivy, keeping his guns trained on Ollie, and starts covering her withdrawal. "Anyway, it's been real, yo. Maybe someday we can team up- you know, Red and Green, compadres against the law, fighting the good fight! Anti-heroes unite! Or whatever, I'm good for some brewskis." He waggles a gun barrel at Ollie in farewell. "So, like, take it easy, I guess?"
 
Ivy considers the stranger, and then considers her loathing of computers. While she does all this thinking, the floorboards in various parts below both her and Deadpool start to mysterious pull below, as if something were clipping away at a jigsaw puzzle bit by bit. "Fine," she declares flatly, again surprising herself with this uncharacteristic compromise.
Flicking the external hard drive into the air--what would appear wildly, but in fact meant to gleam Arrow's attention for an easier escape. Dozens of vines emerge from below, wrapping themselves around the torso and legs of both Pamela and Wade. She warns him, just before they begin to get a freakish tugging below the room, into the basement levels below, "Get ready. This might hurt." Within the next 15 seconds, they're out of sight. They were, in fact, being pulled through carved tunnels in the earth below. And, yes, it did hurt.
 
Green Arrow breaks his look at Ivy and Deadpool and tracks the hard drive. He grabs it out of the air as the duo make their escape. "Yeah. Red and Green. Christmas comes Early kind of thing." He shakes his head as he begins to run off in the other direction. He kicks out a window and slips out of the building while the vines cover his escape from the rear.
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