Grace smiled as Patti rejected her offer to get portaled off to Australia, before being enveloped inside a giant hug. She gave Patricia a few comforting pats on the back, both to signal her approval and tell her that she was squeezing way too damn hard. Regardless of being crushed slowly to death but Patricia's hug, Grace was still highly pleased. She was
pretty sure that what she had said would be more than enough to not have Patricia leave, but these were uncertain times.
"I'm glad," Grace wheezed out as Patricia crushed her ribs, before audibly gasping as Patricia let go (she was
really out of shape).
"You are one of the bravest people I've ever met," Grace mused as she nursed her ribs.
"If I was in your shoes, I might've caved in already, really. I feel so sorry for you...but now isn't the time for a pity party, I guess," Grace quipped as she looked over towards the closed door that led to the stairs.
"You're right, though, " she commented she gave a nod.
"We should deal with that police officer. If we get the drop on him, I can suck him into a portal quickly, though if that doesn't work you could probably hypnotize him...odds are, he's equipped with some sort of contingency against you, though, so it'll be mostly me..."As Grace thought up a plan for how to best incapacitate the police officer, she heard a pissed-off sounding voice that she remembered as belonging to Pandora's calling out to them again, saying
"Bypass? Aria? Bullet? This cops on our team. He's a traitor." Grace looked down at the floor, as if she could see Pandora through it.
"Well..." Grace began quietly.
"Unexpected..." Her eyes laid focused on the ground. She didn't exactly
trust Pandora, but the young(?) woman
was a hero, as burned-out as she seemed to be, and she was would certainly have had reason to assume the mysterious officer was a traitor, or else she would've have publicly yelled it out. There was the possibility that Pandora was selling them out to save her own skin, and unlikely as it was, Grace was still aware of the possibility. She had been betrayed once already; another one seemed natural.
Regardless of her misgivings, Grace still opened a portal on the ground, giving a nod to Patricia before jumping through. She materialized on the other end as though she had fallen straight through the ceiling, landing
gracefully on the ground next to Alpha. Stepping out of the way of the portal, she lifted her hand, purple energy sparking around her fingers as she pointed at Alpha threateningly, in case he tried anything.
"What do you want?" Grace asked, a stern look on her face as she stayed locked-on to Alpha, ready to blast him in a moment's notice. The girl that had fallen through the ceiling was not the same one that had come into the shop, and while her makeup was messed up, the expression on Grace's face displayed a thousand times more confidence than it had before.
@Duoya @Zoey Boey @canaryrose @Amethyst @DarkRecon
"Just about. We're making a quick stop over to HERO One before we head over to have a lovely chat with Seraph. I have some new judo moves I've being dying to try out," Christina said ominously as she piloted the helicopter through the rainy weather. She tilted her head as Starbright spoke.
"That's an old movie, you know...but interesting idea. I think you might be underestimating Seraph, though, he'll just have his lawyers strike the footage down under some bullshit law, and he'll probably pocket some money for libel on the way. But hopefully we can keep stirring the water. The more things are messed up for EAGLES, the better." she said, tapping her thumbs against the yaw as she piloted the helicopter.
"Besides, I'm too cool to go to jail. Tom, on the other hand..." She snickered, but quickly regained her composure.
"I did have a better plan, if I might say so myself. We get some gadgets and secure HERO One, then we head to their little castle and clobber the ever-loving shit out of them," Christina said as the helicopter flew towards HERO One, but instead of moving towards the heli-pad, shot right past it, instead going towards the coast of Passenger Island.
"Anyway, I wouldn't say that we really needed your help, more that you needed ours. If we bailed on the mission, the Wings would've sent somebody much more devious that would probably have finished the job." Christina shrugged.
"Would've been more work for Seraph to shelve, true, so that might've actually worked out in our favor, but probably not in yours, which means that you owe us. Luckily, part of my master plan could use somebody of your...special talents," Christina said after a moment of consideration.
"So considering that we saved your ass, you should probably come with us out of honor. Plus, if you do survive, which is most likely, you'll be more famous than ever before. They'll make movies out of you. Well, they already do, but they'll make better movies about you. Here's the landing." Christina pulled the yaw, bringing the helicopter down to the ground and landing it right by a small park bench and trash can that was facing HERO One. She stepped out of the helicopter, giving a longing glance to HERO One before looking back at the passengers.
"This is highly confidential stuff I'm showing you, OK?" Christina asked, looking over at the two.
"So don't blab about it to anybody you don't trust. I'm looking at you, Noah. If word of this gets to any publication, news source, anything, I will put you through a world of hurt. Ever tried starring in a movie with two black eyes and missing teeth? Make-up can't fix everything," Christina said darkly, before smiling again almost too suddenly.
"Alright, follow me!"Christina walked over to the trashcan, looking around as she did so.
"Nobody here...the perfect spot. Nice treeline blocks off the view, and no path means no old people really use this place...Powers knows his stuff," Christina said admiringly, before coughing and speaking.
"Samantha, this is Assistant Director Christina Lavender, here with heroes Spacewalker and Starbright, under my authority," she said, speaking to what seemed like the trashcan, and miraculously, the trashcan responded in a chirpy, light female voice.
“Greetings, Assistant Director Lavender. The tunnel is ready to use.”"Excellent," Christina said, and then she did something very strange. She stepped into the large trashcan, submerging herself about halfway into the can.
"Follow me after. Don't worry, there's no trash in here," Christina explained, and then she suddenly vanished, like the trashcan had sucked her inside. She was gone in the blink of an eye.
Where Christina went was probably the single most exciting thrill ride in all of history. She had gone down a streamlined white tube that shot down and then across at rapid speeds, like some sort of extremely high-speed intense tube waterslide, zipping across parallel to the water at high speed for a longish period of time before rapidly dropping them into a chamber with a stretchy foam floor to cushion from the fall. Christina was leaning against the wall, smiling.
"Fun, isn't it? Powers just wanted to have a walking tunnel, but I figured this was much more time-effective and much, much cooler," Christina briskly guided them into the hallway beyond the bouncy room.
"Welcome to HERO's negative third floor. Advanced weapon storage," Christina said, guiding them into the hallway.
"We have some gizmos we need to pick up quickly."The -3 Floor of HERO was made of stark white walls and corridors. The walls were covered in all sorts of high-tech weaponry, including all manner of futuristic-looking pistols, rifles, machine guns, swords, shields, everything. Christina seemed mostly disinterested in these gadgets, though, only briefly stopping to snag a silenced pistol off the wall and holstered it on her waist.
"Nice gun...but we have bigger fish in this lake," Christina said as she approached a large steel door. She pressed her palm against the scanner, and in a second the doors slid open, revealing another corridor.
"Welcome to our Contingency Hall."The Contingency Hall was a long hallway that looked similar to a museum, with glass exhibition cases lining the corridors. Inside the cases were a bunch of varying items, some that looked like weapons, but some that looked like household tools and everyday items. There were labels in front of the cases, but instead of describing the items, they had hero names on them. Christina walked in front slowly like a docent, speaking informatively.
"This is where we keep all of our specialized gadgetry, in case any of you decide to betray us like Seraph just did. It happens very rarely, but you never know. Plus, some of the villains we face can be subdued using the gadgets, and Coldwater sometimes reverse-engineers the gadgets for their cells. It's some top-tier tools in here, though hopefully we won't have to use most of them anytime soon. Here's Piranha Man's, it's a fish repellent, we got the idea out of an old Batman TV show," Christina explained as she walked, elaborating on the various strange gadgets found in the hall as she continued on.
"As you can see, the hallway is ordered from B- to A+. We don't have anything designed for most C-tiers, we just keep some general equipment in a storage room over there, it would be too expensive to make gadgets for every single HERO, so we cut back a bit...here's yours, Starbright, it's a camera whose flash causes your skin to turn green and makes you all ugly, it's a fun bit of tech..." She continued walking.
"Here's Patti's, we call it the Anti-Mic, it looks like a microphone but it actually absorbs most sound within about 15 meters, pretty cool stuff. We also have Grace's, but I'm not sure what it does exactly, all I know is that it messes up her powers, makes it so her portals don't work, and we have Brie's, it's a mini lightning rod...and here's the A-tiers!" Christina slowed down a bit as she looked around.
"There's Blake's, it's basically a freeze ray that functions as a fire extinguisher, cool stuff, and here we have yours, Tom, there's some anti-gravity grenades, they make a bubble where gravity just doesn't work...a-ha!" Christina stopped at three adjacent cases with various equipment inside.
"Samantha, open cases 37, 38, and 39," Christina said, and the glass slid open a second later. Christina removed what appeared to be an awl, a paper bag, and a dart gun from the exhibits, before closing the cases.
"These are for the Wings of Law. This pointy thing is made of some really weak metal, so it turns Mr. Impressive into a melting heap of crap, it's probably hilarious, actually...this bag is full of hyper-absorbent sponges, good for any water user, so you could shrivel up Will pretty easily with this as well, and this dart gun has a nerve agent that turns off wings. It's for Seraph, but you could use it on Priestess if you want, it'd probably be funny," Christina mused, clipping the awl to her belt and handing the bag of sponges to Starbright.
"Don't drop those..." she noted as she moved over to a second door, this one a large dark vault door with a giant golden S on the middle.
"This is the S-Tier vault. We'll use the private access elevator to get up to the top floor, and we'll take one of the jets over to Seraph's place," she explained, opening the vault door in the same manner she did the last. After releasing some steam, the vault doors slid open, revealing a large chamber that was lined with a variety of gadgets. Each S-Tier hero's name had an abundance of gadgetry underneath it. Jamie's had several suits of armor and a variety of futuristic-looking weapons underneath it, while Pandora's had a terrarium and a few sniper rifles there. More troubling than these measures, though, were the two three individuals standing in the middle of the room, facing the heroes with looks of victory on their faces.
The man standing in the middle was the unmistakable figure of Perfected Physique, a 6'3" hunk of a man with massive pectorals, a chiseled form, wavy brown hair, and a face that was very clearly modified to be youthful, but still betrayed his age. Perfected Physique was a member of the Wings of Law that transitioned successfully from a career in superheroism to one in modelling, and his fame had gifted him an upper-echelon position in the Wings of Law. Gifted with super strength, Perfected Physique (real name Bradley) dazzled the ladies for 20 years, and if he had his way he would be dazzling them for 20 more. He was, like most of the Wings of Law, a notorious womanizer, having had a long list of ladies to his name, but he had fallen out of the limelight in recent years, replaced by the younger heroes, whose attractiveness did not have to be kept with plastic and surgery. Standing at his flank were two (former) villains of familiarity. Devious Dingo was an Australian migrant with a propensity for explosive firearms that had run bazookas to crime families before being taken down, and The Illuminator was a villain that had tried to make a superweapon out of household lightbulbs, after having succeeded in creating a super-suit that could absorb light and fire energy blasts with it.
"I knew you were too crafty to be dead, Miss Lavender," Perfected Physique said with his syrupy, annoying voice. "The same with you two...I knew Seraph was wrong to trust you, Spacewalker, Zhenka is far too cozy with the younger heroes. I knew I had to go out on my own, find out what you were up to, so I snuck a peek at the phone reader, and I found you here...well, I guess it's time I let him know your
true colors, eheheh?" Perfected Physique reached for his phone, but before he could put it to his ear, Christina had drawn her pistol and, with pinpoint accuracy, shot it out of his hand, sending it skidding to the floor, a perfect hole in the middle.
"Snitches get stitches, Brad," Christina quipped, but before she could line up another shot, Devious Dingo had rushed into action, drawing a baseball bat and smacking her roughly. Christina just avoided the blow, and rushed at the villain, pinning him against the wall and struggling to keep him still.
"Tom, fuck these pricks up!" Christina shouted as she wrestled with Devious Dingo. Meanwhile, the Illuminator approached Starbright, cracking his knuckles, and Perfected Physique cracked his neck as he stepped towards Tom. "Get ready to go down, pretty boy!" he said with a growl, before charging at Tom, aiming to tackle him to the ground.
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