Heroes: The Road of Good Intentions

[Agent Fisher]

Ghost let his invisibilty drop for a split second, as he was directly behind the Bobs, letting his team know where he was. He was ready to grab the Bob with the 'Noisy' Crickett weapon and disarm him. All he needed was the signal from Blackheart.

[Hotfoot]

Hotfoot blinked at Argent as she gave her cryptic message. It took a few seconds for the pieces to fit together, but he got the basic idea, or at least he thought he did. "Agents, I think I should review the paperwork. If you've read the forms concerning the last mission, you know I can read and review appropriate paperwork in a fraction of the time anyone else here could. After all, we wouldn't want this to seem like it wasn't properly filed, right? I'll only take a moment, I promise. Then you can get back to taking this criminal into custody."

He glanced to Blackheart and grinned. "After all, we wouldn't want to do anything against protocol, would we, sir?" A wink on the side of his face away from the Bobs, an attempt to let him know what was going on.

[frigidmagi]

Blast blinked... They were being threatened by a pair of guys with guns and... Paperwork!?! Just when he thought his life couldn't get any weirder. Confused was definitely the word here. Those looked like energy weapons... Maybe... Best to make sure, plus Ghost might like knowing he should move a little. He stood up and sorta wondered over to Argent.

"I have a question. Are those energy weapons?" He asked mildly.

[LadyTevar]

Argent was nearly overwhelmed by the selfless actions going on around her, all to protect her from the Bobs. What had she done to deserve this? Had she *ever* did something that deserved this much loyalty?

Ghost behind the Bobs, ready to move. Blackheart tensed for action. Hotfoot highly amused at the thought of getting his hands on the paperwork, which would catch on fire as soon as he turned on his power. Blast actually walking between her and the Bobs, one step away from actually blocking the aim. Hell, did that robosuit move as well?

Did she deserve to be protected like this?

Deep inside her, the answer came back.
No.

But her teammates were doing it anyway.

[SirNitram]

"I said move away from her!" One of the Bobs said as Blast moved, his weapon jiggling disturbingly. The situation was escalating. Frontline teams often caused trouble, but this was something else.

The other Bob stared down Blackheart. "I'm sorry you felt you had to say that." He said simply. And then several things happened at once.

The 'Noisy' Crickett discharged, knocking one Bob backwards and into Ghost who had been poised to grab him. Blackheart flipped the table up, as the other Bob's proton pack discharged. The coiled snake of charged particles snapped forward towards Blast and Argent...

And everything slowed to almost a standstill. The table hung in the air, moving impercibly. The round from the Cricket was about to impact it, in the same sense any moment now, California would snap free of the continent. The angry, glowing whip of accelerated particles that lurched at Blast and Argent was moving along visibly, but then again, an energy weapon at Blast was not the wisest move.

In the back, half-forgotten, Gravitas was very carefully timing his breathes in and out, as he bent spacetime enough to slow things down and hopefully prevent disaster. Only Mirage Team could move, for the next few moments.

[frigidmagi]

Okay... This wasn't quite what he had in mind, but whatever. Fucking paperpushers. He lunged through the glowing whip of energy reaching out with his left hand and... contact. HE HAD IT!

It was like playing with a happy puppy, pulling in the whip. It would try to skip this way and that but in the end easy to control. He pulled and pulled. He didn't want just the whip, he wanted the gun and he was getting it.

The backpack light went out and the gun made an almost sad sound as it was drained completely. Bob looked down as his high speed, low drag, hi-tech, super expensive weapon became a high speed, low drag, hi-tech, super expensive, heavy... Paperweight.

[LadyTevar]

Argent didn't stop to think about the hows or whys, she simply too advantage of the time given her.

The large shadow she'd been gathering underneath the table surged upwards, wrapping itself tightly around the shot fired from the Noisy Cricket. Lei made the shadow as strong as she could, with the idea that her shadows would take the force of the shot far better than a mere table could.

She noted that Blast was right about the energy weapon being no problem for him, and promised to thank him ... hell, thank ALL of them ... the very first chance she got. "Weapons neutralized, Blackheart. All yours."

[Cynical Cat]

"Thank you Argent," said Blackheart. "Blast, suck all the energy out of that energy bolt thingy that Argent is holding. Ghost, Legacies, strip them of their gear. Kidnapping, reckless endangerment, attempted murder, and impersonating a federal agent should do for a start with the charges. Get them thoroughly checked, including for micro biotech implants, and their asses in the special cells. Give these boys their phone calls once secured. I want to know who is going to try and spring their asses."

[frigidmagi]

The other side was tossing energy bolts around... At best. Thus he couldn't say he felt all that threatened. Blast walked over to the ball of shadow and reached in, the shadows parted, he assumed Argent was opening a path for him. His fingers tingled has they brushed the bolt and it was pulled into him. Huh, never felt a tingle before.

"Done, I got the backpack weapon drained dry, should I get the pistol to?" He asked.

[Agent Fisher]

Ghost moved quickly, removing the Bob's Noisy Cricket, stripping off his gear and cuffed his hands behind his back. He repeated the process with the other Bob. He stood up, frowning. "Well that was fucking fun." His chest still hurt from where the Bob had been thrown against him.

The spook meta looked at the pistol. "Looks like something out of a fucking movie."

[Dark Silver]

Stone cleared his throat, and spoke up - "To let you know.....they weren't wrong Agent Blackheart - they are Ultima Special Agents Robert Smith and Smith Roberts. And while they may have been....slightly overzealous...I'm looking at thier data-logged paperwork over the system. They have prior authorization to obtain Agent Argent for further questioning...though it says nothing about lethal force in the paperwork."

Stone seemed almost fidgety here, looking over the newly incarcerated Bob's.

"So..a few of those charges won't be stickable. Though the wreckless endangerment and attempted murder would be if I'm not mistaken. Those weapons look like Grade Alpha Lethal Electronic Ordinance, no stun settings. The GU-4 Mark II Proton Accelerator Burst Pack for instance, isn't particularly nice when it's discharge comes to contact with organics..."

Stone rose to his own feet, as the Power Armor picked up the proton pack in one of the metal shod hands, and almost seemed to be looking it over while it's operator walked over to Bowman and Blackheart.

[frigidmagi]

"Electronic Weapons, when one guy can bend space, another guy can slurp up energy and so on?" Blast asked. He looked over at the Bob's.

"Your research skills suck!" He accused.

[SirNitram]

With a shudder, time flooded back into the room. Gravitas panted quietly in the corner he hovered in, exhausted with the effort of slowing down time enough for that to be a casualty-free situation.

Robert Smith glared as he could move again, and found himself bereft of his equipment. "You don't know what you've started, Field Agent." He glowered. It was the glower of a powerless man, really. One who had no business taking on a room for a metahumans. "This was an authorized detainment! Look at the damn forms!"

[Dark Silver]

"Authorized maybe, except for the use of lethal force in the containment of said subject, Agent Smith."

"Especially when presenting proper orders to the commanding officer of the Team and the Supervising Agent is standard procedure, instead of bursting in like a drug bust....I think you'll find your paperwork doesn't cover THAT small bit." Stone almost sounded a bit smug there....

"And like the kid says...your research skills suck. It even says in your DF-98A form, that the team has energy manipulators and absorbers...."

[LadyTevar]

The shadows were still laying thickly about as Lei took a moment to process what almost happened. Almost nervously, two small tendrils of shadow had started picking up the pages of Paperwork that had scattered when the table flipped. She wasn't sure where or how Dr. Stone had gotten his information, but if he was right, it seemed the agents were taking their orders far too seriously.

The Bobs had come expecting resistance, and were willing to use lethal force not just on her, but on her team. "Blackheart? Bowman? ... Am I still grounded and on probation? Or am I under arrest?" she asked quietly, needing clarification. Somewhere in the neat pile the shadow tendrils were building was that answer, as well as possibly who ordered her arrest. "Because this is the second time someone's used lethal force to make sure I don't leave Ultima."

Once is happenstance, twice coincidence. Lei didn't want to wait for the third 'confirmed enemy action'. She hoped that Bowman and Blackheart also wanted to skip that step. "What do you want to do with me until this is straightened out," she asked, quietly turning her fate over to her superiors.

She didn't want to run now. She wanted to have a few words with whomever ordered this blatant attack on the team just to get her. From the general feeling in the air she wasn't the only one. But most of all, she didn't want to be sleeping in an Ultima-owned apartment for someone to try this again when her teammates weren't there to help her.

[Hotfoot]

Hotfoot smiled as the situation was defused. "Well, I guess I might as well double check that paperwork." He bounded over the mess in the room, letting his natural grace take over as he landed next to the pile of papers. He scooped up the forms and started looking through them, flipping through the papers with a wide grin on his face. "Hey Chief, how fast do you want me to do this? I've been looking for an excuse to burn that midnight oil, y'know?" He really wanted to destroy the damn forms, but he looked to Blackheart for the okay. The forms themselves were boring, for the most part, but he looked for a few interesting bits, idly wondering if he could get enough personal information from these forms to crank call these guys in the middle of the night.

[Cynical Cat]

"Their illegal actions have nullified their arrest, but that won't necessarily stop the next batch," said Blackheart. "We need to climb the chain and find out who fucking signed off on this idiocy in the first place so we can put a stop to it. So no arson by the way of overenthusiasm."

[LadyTevar]

Quietly the two shadow tendrils continued to straighten up the paperwork, even handing Hotfoot new pages for him to look over. It was clear by the way some were handed to him upside down that the tendrils couldn't actually read, which meant Argent probably had no clue what was in them either. She was just doing something out of nervousness, like how two new tendrils appeared just long enough to set the table back upright.

She was doing a decent job at keeping her emotions away from her teammates, finally sitting back down in her chair to watch and wait for Blackheart's decision.

[Hotfoot]

"Yes sir." Hotfoot wasn't happy about that, but Blackheart was right. He looked at Agent Bowman and nodded to the papers as he reorganized them to at least be facing the right direction. "Now I know I'm just a 'Civilian Contractor', but you have to admit, this looks pretty bad. All this paperwork filled out in less than twelve hours? How exactly did this happen, especially since you went through the trouble of bringing along an empath to monitor this little meeting? Was this all just a joke, or did you actually not know that these paper pushers with delusions of grandeur were going to come barging in on us?"

He hefted the stack of papers and brought them down with a resounding thud. "If you ask me, it looks like someone up the chain of command fucked up. So who's the Chief and who's the Brave in your pond dude?" Anger was starting to boil in Hotfoot, this was Ultima, the official government superhero agency. It was supposed to have its shit together, know what it was doing, and this bullshit reared it's head? "Fuck man, ten bucks says there's no fucking empath interviewing the fuckups that signed off on this shit twelve hours from now. Ten 'I don't recall' pieces of bullshit later and they'll be smelling like god damned roses, won't they? Never mind they made a decision that wasn't in the field, wasn't under pressure, and wasn't with all the evidence in hand. But hey, it's okay if you ruin someone's life from behind a desk. That's the hard part, signing a fucking sheet of paper!" His voice grew louder until he was shouting the last few words, the normally kind, generous young man's face twisted into anger and rage as he shouted at Bowman and the Empath next to him.

He paused, looking around the room, as if just realizing where he was. Sparks of plasma ignited around him, his power on the verge of erupting around him. He took a deep breath and the power was reigned back in, though he was shaking from the sudden outburst. He stepped away from Bowman and back towards the team, leaving the papers on the recently righted table.

[Cynical Cat]

"Yes," said Blackheart, "the ones responsible for this fuck up will skate away, perhaps with an embarrassing mark on their career or even less than that. Yes, it's not just. Not the first injustice to happen today or the last."

He sighed mentally. He wanted to stop fighting, just lie down and let it all wash over him. What had the world given him that he fought so hard for it? Was it worth it to spend the last days of his life at the rudder trying to keep the damn ship pointed in the right position in the storm. At least when the tumor ate his brain it would be fucking over.

He had the power to make a difference, still, and that was enough. Had not Taskmaster used him just as much as Ultima or Gravitas? David Gray was the boy who cried in the dark because no one loved him, no matter what he did. That boy was gone. He was Blackheart, the man that would fight forward not matter how badly he was hurt, no matter how much it would cost him.

His voice was stronger, firmer. "We can bitch about how fucked up the world is or we can do something about it. Tarot is running around Japan doing God knows what but I can guarantee you it's not good. Raising Caine is making demonic hybrids. Someone killed Cascade and is now walking free with a hero's blood on his or her hands. What are a bunch of Ultima bureaucrats who are now going to be engaged in ass covering compared to that?" He hoped he managed to get through to them. He wouldn't have put money on it.

[SirNitram]

"Singularly, these two and whoever did this are ultimately meaningless. Best we turn it over to people we trust to sort through the files and find it out while we deal with the bigger problems." Gravitas mused quietly, watching the Bobs.

"We'd best focus on Raising Caine, unless someone particularly wants to start a brawl with Tarot without evidence. As for Cascade... I don't know if any of us can track down who did it, so I say we hold our cards on that."

[LadyTevar]

Lei's gaze sharpened on Blackheart, catching some of his emotions beneath the psychic cloud the Demon inside him threw out. She'd have to get away from him at some point, cleanse herself from what he/it did to her. Blackheart spoke tough, but she felt the exhaustion and the momentarily wish to just drop his burdens.

For some reason, it gave her the momentary urge to walk over and hug him.

Somehow, Lei didn't think he'd appreciate that, and more than he liked being called David.


"I would not be surprised if some of this paperwork can be traced to Tarot," Argent said instead. "But I think Gravitas is right. Raising Cain is creating more Abaddons, or worse. We do not need any more half-demons running loose, much less an army of them." She gave a small smile, ending with a joke. "Look how much trouble Blackheart and I can get into."

[Cynical Cat]

Blackheart felt a surge of rage at the backstabbing witch presuming upon the comraderey she had betrayed. Control. Anger wouldn't serve him here. It rarely did anyway. Control.

Besides, they both were right. Raising Caine was the greater threat. He didn't have much time left, it wasn't something he could put off. But to take a team warring against itself into a nest of demonic hybrids was bad, even with Gravitas's raw power behind them. He had to give all due credit to the self proclaimed god. Gravitas had badly outmaneuvered him.

"Taking this team against Raising Caine would be like stuffing them into a meat grinder," said Blackheart. "We can't afford any cowboy shit or to start coming apart against the kind of threats we face there. We aren't ready."

[LadyTevar]

Lei's head jerked up, giving Blackheart a startled stare as she felt the surge of sudden rage, ruthlessly controlled, but boiling underneath. She suddenly wanted to find a dark shadow to hide inside.

As he snapped out his biting comments, she felt even lower. Odd, how the team had worked so well together only moments before, and yet now Blackheart was the first to take offense.

[Agent Fisher]

Ghost spoke up. "Ok, boss, then what do you suggest?" He asked. "Freak Legion was supposed to be a training op, and that got shot to shit."