Earlier
Rubber squeals as a boxy blue sedan tips a streak of tread to the corner on a cold Lost Haven night. Steam rises from manhole covers as the dank warm sewer air breaks through to the winter's gloom. The man in black sits hunched over the wheel, his breath clouding in front of his face from his own gloom.
He's frustrated. Searching warehouses all night looking for the source of the highjacked frequency used by the Pax Metahumana. Its been slow work, since the Vigilante has had to search every warehouse under the assumption that it could be under the secure blanket of a band of metahuman extremist nutjobs.
A heavy scowl on his face, he pulls up to the next address. Even as he steps out of his car Isaac can see light bursting from a row of skylights across the warehouse's high roof.
Coupled with the fact he could not hear any heavy machinery as he approaches... his confidence that he's found the right place quietly builds. According to city records it's supposed to be an abandoned lot.
His hand drops to his hip and he draws his grappling gun with a smile. Seconds later he's on the roof.
Treading carefully around thick, heavy-insulated cables Isaac peaks through the skylights to the inside of the warehouse below.
Nobody.
Whoever was here had long since cleared out. Isaac pried open one of the heavy skylight windows and quietly rappelled down to the warehouse floor using his grapple gun.
They WERE here though. All of the lights were on as well as lights the group had brought themselves for the video message. They'd left them here along with a camera mounted on a tripod attached to a laptop. As well as an antennae, attached to the thick cable that led to the roof.
Isaac looked at the equipment.
"Long gone. Looks like they tapped into the mains power. Probably why they left the lights on. Weren't coming back, nothing to link them to this place, not worth the time to cut the lines. Same reason they left the main door open when they left."
Cocky. He didn't care for the long-necked creep when he first saw him on the TV and he liked him even less now.
Maybe he could track them down from something left here..? He went to the laptop.
Dead. Battery ran out... or the group fried it when they left.
"RAAAAAARGH!" he growled in frustration, kicking one of the light stands, battering it into the antennae some distance away. Then smiled.
He stopped and ran through his thoughts aloud.
"So the laptop-- the laptop is connected to the camera... you needed the laptop for your feed..."
He crossed the warehouse floor, his mind racing.
"But your antennae's not connected to the laptop... so you're not using it for the video feed..."
Isaac walked to the open warehouse door, soaking in the cold Lost Haven night.
"...so what are you using the antennae for if it's not the feed, you stretchy prick..?"
He answered his own question. "It's for your goddamn bomb isn't it..?"
The Vigilante soaked in the Lost Haven skyline. Standing over the other buildings like a colossus, the top of the Chambers building winked at him with numerous twinkling lights.
"Of course. I should have guessed it. Fucking metas... always got to do everything in the most dramatic style possible."
Later
Thinning tires stripped more of their thread a block away from the biggest highrise in the city. Isaac abandoned the car. It was a cheap hunk of crap that couldn't be tied back to him, paid for with cash and the documentation fraudulent. If the worst that happened to him tonight was that he was down less than a grand on another generic shitbox then tonight was going to be a pretty good night by his standards. There were more pressing matters at hand.
He looked to the top of the city's foremost skyscraper and sighed. He hated having to grapple to the top of this building. Too damn tall. He always had to use the surrounding buildings in order to get to the top and he was never the best shot, even with a well-weighted piece.
Isaac's pet-project - his homemade grapple gun, which could also fire off a series of concussive or screw-like "Shredder" bolts - could not be described as a "well-weighted piece".
"Chambers, you preeminent prick..." He muttered, not knowing exactly who "Chambers" was, "...your bloody building is going to be the death of me..."
Some time later he swung his way high enough that he was within a final grapple line of the building's zenith. The hook struck true and the powerful winch drew him to the rooftop's edge where he would be able to climb up as quietly as possible. He'd heard voices from the rooftop, right or wrong he was not alone...
Peeking over the roof top he saw that he was indeed right. What he was looking for was attached to the building's antennae, which provided telecommunications coverage for all 4 boroughs of Lost Haven's city.
He watched on in silence, getting the measure of the others already on the roof...
Invisibility is caused by one of three things: the bending of light, the existence of something in an alternate dimensional plane parallel to Earth’s own, and illusory powers that convince onlookers that whatever is cloaked simply isn’t there. Marie scoured her internal library, flipping through the many hundred pages of grimoires she had read over the years, thinking back on spells and charms that she had employed, and some of her own creation, in order to devise a plan. With her free hand, she slowly reached into her cloak, maintaining eye contact with her “captor” so as not to arise suspicion,and produced the small black book of incantations she had kept on her person for such occasions. She searched its pages for a way to dispel the bomb’s glamour, hoping that whatever enhancements or enchantments that kept it hidden were of a magical nature. She stopped on a page that held several methods of detecting glamours and illusions, all of which required more materials than what she had on hand. There was a simple incantation that required a pinch of witch’s salt as a reagent, but she had neglected to carry any with her.
“That’s it!” Marie exclaimed aloud, the stranger giving her a confused look. She remembered a vial of black salt she had seen on a shelf at The Red Devil earlier that day. If it were in that exact location, she should be able to bring it to her. Marie took mental note of the incantation, put away her book, and outstretched her arm, her palm facing upward. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the layout of the room. Within her mind’s eye she could see it clearly, that room on the second floor filled with witchy paraphernalia. There on a shelf in the corner of the room lay the black salt, contained in a circular vial with a tag hanging from the corked lid. In an instant, the bottle vanished from its place in The Red Devil, a thin, white mist and a flash of light ushering it into Marie’s hand atop the Chambers Building. She smiled, having rarely conjured physical items before.
Marie quickly uncorked the lid of the bottle, took a pinch of the salt, and in an otherworldly voice spoke the incantation aloud, whose words tore through the wind and echoed eerily. She tossed the salt into the wind where it crackled and turned to sparks, fanning out and sweeping across the top of the building, willing all that is hidden to be found.
"You could have saved your breath, doll." The voice of a man in black crackled through his voice modulator after she'd finished her incantation. "If you're here for the same reason I am, it's right there..."
RPM,
Captain Uni,
xVampire3go,
Antlers,
Master Bruce,
Eddie Brock,
Sep,
Moon Child,
adncod,
CabbageAngel
