Pleased that they'd found what they had come for, he briefly allowed himself a self-satisfied smile...before everything started unravelling, just as he had suspected it might.
Dammit! Chatterbox thought for a frantic moment before narrowing his eyes and tuning his power to max on anything except for his teammates as he opened his mouth.
"Well that's just a damn SHAME!" He yelled the last word and it resonated through the warehouse, its acoustics sufficient. Immediately his awareness of additional people being affected by his power expanded. His hand entered a number of tap codes to the device he'd been using to communicate to his loyal fans.
He smiled wide and raised his hands and began clapping as he shook his head, keeping close to Sofia.
"Wonderful! Fantastic! We've got interlopers my dear friends. Looks like we're in for an eventful escape doesn't it?!" He laughed again, voice resonating throughout the room with each sound he made.
Oh how he loved the compounding effect of acoustics. He intended to put some more specific emphasis as he spoke,
"Or perhaps it won't be terribly eventful at all," he said...and then something strange occurred, like a faint disruption in his power.
He felt
something even as he took stock of the amount of people he was effecting and how it had gone up a moment ago. There were at least five additional people by his count, not including the drone, which wasn't really a person. To begin with. However, that didn't account for anyone outside their location.
Tapping his finger against his thigh a few more times, he was rewarded a moment later as one of his lackeys spoke into his bluetooth headset. Tapping again he let the woman repeat what she'd said to all of his teammates.
"There are at least three people outside currently. Four entered and we saw one climb the roof earlier. That makes a total of seven people." The words would be inaudible to everyone except the Jacks.
As he walked forwards, Sofia presumably at his side, he stepped into the nullification field unwittingly and everything briefly went awry. His eye twitched, but like the actor he was, he showed no other hint of being effected. Instead, he chuckled and exhaled from his nose. When he looked up and spoke there was a note of irritation in his voice,
"So you've got tricks. How troublesome." As he said it he looked to Headhunter and Thunderbolt, while simultaneously drawing a gun at his side. His eyes scanned the room, noting where he'd begun being effected by the nullification. Wait, a moment ago, he'd heard the door, and he had sensed people in that general direction as well.
Wasting no time waiting for his teammates, he fired his gun at the drone several times and took a number of steps back as he did so. These people, they were capes, or at least one of them was. That and they were heroes and their timing was far too
convenient.As he felt the swell of his power return to him—having stepped out of the field—he made contact with Sofia.
"Ignore us," he commanded, though without the use of his power, before continuing to everyone who could hear, his ears ringing from the sound of the gunshots--hoping that he had driven the drone to a position it couldn't see them properly.
"I deduce that you're all a bunch of heroes. However, I'm going to have to tell each of you not to waste your time being heroes." His smile dimmed, becoming a small smirk instead. He had put emphasis on them not acting heroic or rashly. However, he was playing the long game, projecting his influence via his power to tug at their sense of responsibility, and their will to act.
He wanted them to feel hopeless, powerless, and while it would take time, this introduction of it would sow the seeds...and some of them might be more vulnerable than others.
"That leaves us with two options. You can let us go and take the rest of this Community loot to do with as is lawfully appropriate, or...hehe, and this really amuses me, you can try to take us in as well." All fanfare fell away as he glared up at the drone—the only presumed thing that could see his expressions and was on the opposing side in that moment.
"At which point you will find that you are severely lacking," the words would bite more than they normally would. Feeling more like one's own inner voice calling them useless or like the bite of truth, rather than a stranger's words. Yet, nothing was strange about that. After all, Chatterbox was just at the edge of the nullification field and it could be easily mistaken to still have effect. Besides, with none of them knowing his power, they really had no way of knowing that the more they listened, the more
fucked they would be.
It was a beautiful thing really.
A beautiful thing to be a performer.
He loved it so and soon
they would too.
Why hadn't the old man been expecting them? Was he faking maybe? Something wasn't right.
Looking to the approaching delinquents, Jake tilted his head. He flickered a glance back at the old man, taking a step back from his teammates so that he was behind and to the old man's right. He didn't want to let the civilian out of his sight. Either to protect him or to apprehend him, because something was off...just like it had been when the woman had 'hired' them. Turning his gaze back to the 'Rockers,' he leaned forwards and whispered to Kyoshi,
"Something's up. The timing is too good. Keep an eye on the old man. I'm gonna find somewhere to shift."He then backed up again, patted the old man on the shoulder and smiled—though it felt unnatural on his face. It probably looked mostly genuine. He'd practiced.
"Stay near my teammates, they'll keep you safe, sir." He then stalked off and broke into a jog. Once he had turned a corner and was out of their sight—though not the sight of the many gawking civilians—he ran past a number of allies at full speed. He stopped only when he saw a maintenance ladder, which he made a break for as precious seconds ticked by.
After a few moments of climbing he made his way to the building's roof, only about two minutes having ticked by, at which point he took a deep breath, let it out, inhaled again...and switched.
Everything went black...or maybe white...for a brief moment. There were no sounds, smells, tastes, or sensations. He was nothing, he was nowhere.
Then, in a brief moment of disorientation almost like falling, he existed again. Shaking his massive form in a shudder, he made a mental checklist of his status, noting the tendrils, general dimensions, and the layout of his surroundings via his various senses.
Prepared, he folded the tendrils along his body and compressed his anatomy somewhat with his own barrier, and flew. He was fast, but not at all a blur as he kept a tight handle on his movements, weaving between obstacles. Even avoiding doing damage to the buildings and other objects in the vicinity, he still arrived in seconds.
As he arrived a rush of emotion struck him and he felt his other body smile...wherever it was. Joy, elation, anger, freedom, dislike, distrust, unease all wrapped up in a bundle flooded his mind...and he enjoyed every moment of it.
Even the negative emotions caused whatever the equivalent of endorphins were in his weird biology to trigger. It all felt good. It was relief. It was being human, despite not looking it. Man did he love using his power.
He shuddered again, tendrils undulating faintly as his shadow covered the delinquents as he
swam through the air. All the sounds in the environment fed him information on his surroundings, as did the electrical impulses that ran through living things and the electrical wires. It was all laid out with incredible clarity.
His eyeless gaze turning to face downwards at them like a great monster considering its prey, Outsider spoke, his voice booming out over the area, cutting through the ambient noise entirely.
"I'm going to have to command that you either go somewhere else, or surrendur yourselves." He felt a rush of confidence, pride, and strength as he said it, grinning to himself internally as he moved his tentacles, splaying them out in the air behind him like numerous floating tails. He began drifting through the air, almost circling above the teens. He made sure to let tendrils or body periodically block out the light so they couldn't forget that he was there—not that it would be easy for them to do so to begin with, given his size.
"I would really rather not fight you, because chances are...only you'll be getting hurt." He said it, sounding almost regretful, despite the strange detached sound of his voice. Some people on the other side of the street had taken out their phones and were recording. Traffic was slowing down as people tried to gawk, perhaps making an effort to figure out what was going on.
They were drawing more attention now, which for the delinquents, was hardly good.
All the while, Outsider kept his senses tuned, making sure to keep track of the old man.
He didn't trust him and the feeling of unease—though not unpleasant to his emotion-starved mind—was stronger than before. Still, through the general feeling of
living it was a bit more difficult to focus. Had his senses not been so different it may have even been a problem.
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