Re: Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP]

by **Pinnacle** October 27th 2017, 11:50 pm

Viktor smiled beneath the mask, though, such a thing wouldn't show through the suit.

True, the cybernetic enhancements that he had recieved increased the myelin production around his neuronal axons, but that didn't cause them to fire in the way he required at all times.

The Detective probably didn't realize how valuable his insights were, especially considering that he was local, and knew the ins and outs of the city much better than intel could provide.

Weather... Viktor had overlooked such a thing himself. He tended to rely so heavily on his bells and whistles that he also had the tendency to miss such simple, yet critical details if they were not picked up by his visors or sensors and the like.

Bells and whistles...

Still, they would come in handy here.

"Hold on..." He said...

Through his radio uplink, he accessed the local weather feeds. The process took about a minute and a half, but when it was finished, he linked those feeds to his holopad, bringing them up for Detective Stone to see.

by **Detective Stone** October 28th 2017, 12:33 pm

Serenity Valley Apartments

Ronald's eyes went wide as Recluse managed to pull the weather cam feeds from earlier, projecting them in three dimensions for review. It wasn't long before they saw what they were looking for. Just before the robbery and just after, the feeds showed a tiny speck flying up, above the city. Just a speck from the perspective of the weather cams, but it could only be the seven-foot-tall hulking figure of the robotic Cephalopod that had stolen the Time Crystal from Stein's.

Following the arc of the speck, they were able to see that it had descended into the riverside dock and warehouse district. The perfect place to conceal any kind of secret activity. Despite the massive river locks installed to grant access to trade, many of the warehouses there were empty, abandoned shells. The promised revitalization of the district had largely failed to materialize, leaving the area as a seldom-used ghost-neighborhood. This wasn't the first time a villain had decided to make his base of operations there.

"Looks like we can narrow it down to a cluster of five or six warehouses. Shouldn't be hard to find him. Now... do we get a warrant and call in reinforcements, or does ECLIPSE prefer to handle this sort of thing quietly?"

by **Recluse** October 29th 2017, 6:27 pm

"We have both clearance and jurisdiction in this matter already. I look forward to taking this guy down..." Recluse said. "We should leave immediately..."

Assuming that Detective Stone had left with him that very night, Recluse had traveled in his usual way, via the firing and reeling in of dark webbing to quietly and quickly approach the warehouses. Travel to the warehouses was not difficult; the Timetheif had no reason to suspect that he would be located in time for anyone to stop him. When they both arrived, Recluse scanned the area for energy signature readings from each warehouse.

"It's that one." He says, pointing to a specific warehouse. "Third from the right. Energy readings and thermal are much higher than the others. We must hurry, he may have already put into motion whatever plans he had for the time crystal." He says, and begins to move towards the warehouse... Stopping short and turning after a couple steps.

"Do you have any special abilities that I should know about before we proceed?"

by **Detective Stone** October 30th 2017, 1:29 pm

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] - Page 2 X5IV5Trl

Riverside Warehouse District

Ronald made his way down to the riverside in his Volkswagen Beetle, a form of transportation that was a far cry from the superheroic maneuvers Recluse was capable of. He didn't use the deployable siren, either, as he didn't want the noise and lights to give away their approach. It was inevitable that the cybernetic superhuman would arrive before he did.

When Recluse was able to identify the appropriate building, Ronald was impressed. He could certainly use this panoply of tech tricks in his department. It was amazing what a bit of funding could do. One of the biggest challenges that municipal 'Spacial Investigations' departments had faced was a lack of resources. It was hard for an individual city to muster up the necessary revenue to compete with the powers that metahumans were gifted with free of charge. There had been a lot of noise lately about Federalizing the SI departments of the various local police districts into one nationwide network. Such a change would mean hundreds of millions of additional dollars for tech, not to mention firsthand access to Federal databases.

All of that, and all they had to give up was their autonomy.

Well... autonomy didn't mean much if you couldn't get the job done.

"Do you have any special abilities that I should know about before we proceed?"

When Recluse asked his question, Ronald frowned a bit. What could he tell this man without jeopardizing his life? If he confessed to having even the smallest metahuman ability, he'd go on a registry somewhere. His nature would become public knowledge. His job could be at risk. Even the dating apps sometimes cross-referenced metahuman data. Oh, it was all meant to be private... but there were a hundred ways for corporations to dig up the info. Google could be as scary as the bloody NSA.

And if the government ever decided to round up the freaks, what then?

"My date last night seemed to like this thing I can do with my tongue, but I don't think it'll come up on this bust the way it did on hers."

Ronald went around to the back of his car, popped the trunk, and took out the shotgun contained therein. That shotgun amounted to the majority of the 'Special Investigations' budget that the city could afford. It wasn't the shotgun itself, really, but the ammo. The A.P. steel slugs were ten bucks a pop, for instance.

Oh, there was some bulky kevlar, too. The sort of thing you might expect a bomb squad tech to wear. But Ronald didn't bother with that. It only slowed him down and made him look ridiculous. He took out an earpiece and stuck it in his ear. "Forty-nine point five Megahertz, he told his 'partner,' assuming that tech suit of his could access the desired frequency.

Then, stuffing a bunch of specialty shells into the pockets of his long coat, he closed the trunk and nodded to Recluse, "Normally I'd make multiple entries through multiple entrances, but there's just the two of us, and you've got all the bells and whistles. How do you want to breach?"

********************

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] - Page 2 Dqqsx7ll

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] - Page 2 Dqqsx7ll

Inside the warehouse, a room had been constructed beside a plethora of machines arrayed in the center of the vast space. The room was a control center, and electric tendrils extended from it to the adjacent wonders: Technological marvels had been cobbled together there, each a valuable piece of equipment that might have earned him millions of dollars. But Doctor Seth Laird had no interest in money for its own sake. Everything mattered only in the context of how much nearer it brought him to his goal. Some of his equipment had been purchased, the proceeds from a Life Insurance contract he'd never wanted to cash in on. Some had been custom manufactured. And a few items had been stolen. Things that could not be obtained at any price.

Things like the Time Crystal, for instance.

Sometimes, when he thought about how he'd gotten it, a sickness grew in his stomach. But he reminded himself that if he was successful, then none of it would matter. It would all be undone. He could use every savagery, every flavor of villainy, and it would all be wiped away.

He scratched an itch on his scalp, adjusting the telepresence cap he wore. His robot suit was outside this small office. He would need it for the final passage through the time-portal. Human tissues could not otherwise survive the energy tempest that it would produce.

Seth had planned everything out to the Nth degree. Nothing could go wrong. Not now.

The supercapacitors were charging. In ten minutes, he'd leave this wretched reality behind, creating a better world.

A world in which she was alive.

A world in which she loved him.

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] - Page 2 L77Cji6l

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP] - Page 2 L77Cji6l

by **Detective Stone** November 8th 2017, 10:37 am

[The Warehouse]

***** A SHORT TIME LATER *****

Ronald leveled his revolver at the manic scientist. "It's over, Doctor. Your suit has been destroyed. Your means of resistance has been disabled. Your thefts and murders have been for nothing. It's time to give up."

Doctor Laird's gaze fell upon his ruined robotic suit, its mechanical tentacles now laying limp upon the cracked concrete floor. Behind him, the temporal portal he'd opened was crackling with unimaginable energetic forces... but it was also shrinking. Soon, it would vanish entirely. The Doctor's lips, red with blood, quivered in anguish and defiance.

"You don't understand! None of that needed to have happened! Nobody needed to get hurt! You should have left me alone! You should have let me go through, to change the past! Bring my love back... bring them all back!" Tears streamed down his cheeks, "Maybe... maybe it's not too late..."

Ronald cocked his snub-nosed .44, not because he needed to, but because he hoped it would provide additional emphasis and intimidation, "No, Doctor. It's pretty clear you needed that robotic getup in order to survive the portal. And I couldn't let you go back in time anyway. There's too much that could go wrong. You might make things even worse by changing the past. And even so, you've killed people. People suffered and died. That makes you a criminal, in any timeline. This ends here. Now."

Ronald knew of no particular law against time-travel... mostly because it was not widely acknowledged as being possible. But he was pretty sure no court would convict him for stopping a mass-murderer from going back in time. And murder was murder. Even if you re-wrote the timeline, it had still happened... hadn't it?

But Doctor Laird's eyes were still on the portal. "...maybe I'd survive... somehow... maybe I could save her..." Then, with a sudden burst of movement, the Doctor made a mighty leap towards the portal.

As he did so, Ronald pulled the trigger of his revolver. Too late. Even as the slug slammed into the Doctor's thigh, his body passed through the intense energies surrounding the portal. Then, that crackling sewer-drain-of-time snapped shut like a bear trap. The silence it left in its wake was almost deafening.

Ron tensed, as though waiting for his reality to come undone. But nothing happened. Most likely, Doctor Laird had been killed by the electric maelstrom he'd created. Even if something had been changed in the timeline, there was probably no way Ron would ever know. All he could say for sure was that the crimes that had brought him to this warehouse had still occurred, because he was still here and could still remember them. If the Doctor had changed events, Ron would be somewhere else, doing something else. So dead or alive, the Doctor hadn't accomplished what he'd hoped to accomplish.

Letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, the detective looked over at Recluse. "Pretty tragic, really, when you think about it. At the end of the day, he just wanted to save his wife. He thought none of his crimes would matter if he could re-write events the way he wanted to. I wonder... if I loved someone as much as he did, and I knew how to do it... would I do the same things he did? Steal a time-crystal, even murder the whole world if I needed to, truly believing none of it would stick in the end? Believing I'd get my love back. My life back..."

His voice trailed off as he thought about it. "Anyway, thanks for your help," he uncocked his revolver and holstered it, "Lord knows I'd never have managed to apprehend him on my own. I sank five rounds of .44 special into that suit of his, and it didn't take a scratch."

Ron's clothes were in shambles from when he'd been tossed against a concrete column by the Doctor's robot suit. The fact that his back hadn't been broken must have seemed miraculous to Recluse. He hoped the cybernetic spider-ninja wouldn't think on it too deeply.

"I guess you'll want to take the time-crystal back to your organization for safekeeping. I've got to call this in, then get back to the office and write this up. The CSI guys will have a hell of a time unraveling events here. If you've got any digital footage in that spider-suit of yours, do me a solid and drop a copy in my email, would you?"

With that, Ronald took out his cell-phone, as miraculously undamaged as he had been- and used its 'digital police radio' app to call in the crime-scene. In the instance of his cell-phone, its tough Otterbox case had proved to be money well spent. Once the call was complete, he leaned against a cracked support column and considered the events of the day.

He'd woken up investigating a robbery, and would go to sleep later after facing down a time-travelling mad scientist with the help of a cyborg super-agent.

Just another day in the city.

OOC - After nine days without a response, I am concluding this thread. Thank you for your participation. I hope we can write together again in the future.

by Sponsored content

Another Day in the City (Detective Stone & Recluse) [Double XP]