Softlock

Before he receives the redirected shipment of mag-lev tech from the Bratva, ____ realized that he'll need a secure location to work on his new equipment. Big problem with that of course is money. He checks the list he decoded for potential Bratva fronts used for money laundering, and gets surprised when he sees a neighborhood credit union in the list.

___ knows that Bratva influence in Brighton Beach could only be problematic, and he concludes a good way to discourage usage of said bank... was to rob it. If he breaks the illusion of untouchability the gang has, hopefully more people would be willing to stand up against them. So he sets a heist to go down in broad daylight. That should send the message, albeit it was risky.

Expertises:
Mask making
(Explosive) Chemistry
Kusari Fundo
Criminal Law
Wieeless network
Brazilian juijuitsu(martial arts)
Handheld Firearms
Acting
Automobiles
Script writing


After taking a few hours to reorganize his specialities, he formulates a quick setting face mask and constructs it to make himself look like an older man. Then he builds 10 masks, spray painting them a grey and installing homemade walkie talkies inside of them. He can't afford the hardware to encrypt all the messages but he doesn't plan to.

He connects each mask to a small bomb that is designed to go off 1 second after removing it... As long as it doesn't detect any warm bodies within 15 feet of it, otherwise it would beep louder and louder until its no longer close, then explode. He wanted to make it clear the bombs are real, without making them too dangerous. As for why...

____ is obviously taking a risk doing this heist in broad daylight. That's usually when the supers go on their patrols, so he needs to remove any potential sentence time by making every single person involved in the robbery coerced with the treat of death and effectively a hostage, including himself. Drawing inspiration from the collar bomber killer, ____ hopes that it will be enough to pull this off without making a target out of anyone involved.

He sets up his shoe as a specialized deadman transmitter so that he can play the prerecorded messages into each mask. The mask bomb threat will activate automatically should he let go of all the inputs at once, and he has a special code for each formation.

After "recruiting" (under the threat of being blown up) 6 drug-dealing thugs and 3 random pedestrians and outfitting them with his oh-so-fashionable masks, he sends the assembled team into a van. A woman's the getaway driver, so she stays in the car and keeps it warm. She still wears the mask, yet he can tell she's crying.

The thugs have guns, ___ and the other three do not. He picked the toughest looking guy and outfitted him in a costume to make him like a supervillain. The mask is outfitted with small speakers with the robotic voice he preprogrammed to command fear and respect. And handful of them tremble in fear at the situation they're in. He's shaking too, mainly because he needs to sell that he's just another victim...

The van stops in front of the credit union, and there was a long pause as the crew waits so that there was someone about to open the inside door of the bulletproof glass doors. "This guy is insane. Why us? What did we do wrong?", a teenage boy whines. The 'Boss' looks at him for a bit, apparently sympathetic to the situation. "As long as this goes on without a hitch, we'll all be fine. The guy said that he would disarm the bombs after the bank was robbed. He also promised no one would get hurt, so take some deep breaths, and stick to the plan."

___ takes a deep breath. "Listen, please... I don't want to die, but if I do, can you guys please tell my family I love them? My name is Jordan Mitchel, I'm visiting from Maine."

The doors of the van pop open with the crew scrambling out. The doors for this type of walled security requires the bank teller to let them in one the front doors closed, so instead Jordan pulls out an odd remote-control device, and the door unlocks on its own. Once they step through, Slate sprays the cop with a spray that almost instantly makes him collapse. Three thugs with their guns shoot a round each into the sky. The teen goes to the teller and gulps, and with a shaky voice says in a quiet voice "this is a robbery. We have bombs attached, we don't have a choice. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...".

The speaker of the main "Villian" activates, and the big guy makes grand gestures as instructed, while the robotic voice echoes out in German. "Greetings, I. Am. Known. As. Slate. Do not try to escape, or we will have to shoot you with poison. Trigger any alarms, and one of my hostages will die. Hostages, shoot anyone that moves more than a foot in any direction. Other hostages... You may sit down, this will only take a moment."

Jordan, the teen, and another woman, all with masks, grab their bags and start loading the money into said bags. Should the people in the bank attempt to attack, they were told to shoot a skin-contact based nitroglycerin at them to knock them out. Should a hero show up, all three of the bag holders should spit up and head through different exits.

Two of the thugs begin setting small charges on the frames of the door exits were and bank doors... Jordan can tell that one of them has peed a little from the smell that permeated in the van, but they're doing their tasks as instructed. He'll make sure everyone gets compensated for their trouble...

It was a beautiful day in New York, as Speedrun made his usual laps around the streets, as everything around him seemed to stand perfectly still. He enjoyed his daily patrols, there was just something about seeing the city at hyperspeeds, that gave him a certain level of perspective.  

It was that very perspective that would spot the Van of masked figures, well before they would spot him. He zipped up to a nearby rooftop, keeping low and out of sight, as he observed the group. Clearly seeing that they had intentions of robbing the bank.  

“Oh is it noon already.” He joked to himself.  

As he watched the group move into the bank, he couldn’t help but sense something was off. A few of them moved reluctantly, as if they wanted to be anywhere but here. “Huh, weird.” He brushed it off, thinking it could be first job jitters.  

As the main group stepped inside, Speedrun made his first move, dashing down to the van.  

First step, take away their escape.

As he reached the drivers door, he was prepared to give one of his witty one-liners.  

But, the second he saw the drivers face, a wave of unease washed over him.  

She was also wearing one of the same gray masks the others had on, Speedrun could see it was hand painted. But it wasn’t the custom mask that caught his attention, as she looked out the window, the clear sign of fear in her eyes was what he immediately noticed

He opened the door, gently, making sure to stop it manually, for at the speed he was moving, one slip, and the whole door could go flying.  

He then reached for the mask, slowly removing it from the womans face, making sure not to pull or push too hard.

Once the mask was free, he turned it over in his hands. “Oh, crap.”  

The other side of the mask was very intricately rigged with a series of devices, from a walkie talkie speaker, to what looked like some kind of detector, and what Speedrun quickly recognized as a makeshift explosive device.  

“Well, don’t need that!!” The speedster grabbed the explosive, tearing it from the mask. He saw a small spark, most likely a failsafe, meaning he had a second in real time before his hand was turned into a bloody stump.  

Luckily, a second for him was plenty of time, as he dashed back down the street, and straight to the ocean, where he raced out as far away from civilians as he could, throwing the small explosive up into the air, before racing back to the van.  

“I wish I could take you out of here...” He stated to woman, who he knew couldn’t hear him, not at this speed. “But I need to avoid drawing attention, at least until I can get the others safe...” He proceeded to put the mask back on the woman, closing the van door, making it seem as if nothing happened.  

He then moved into the bank, barely managing to slip through the automated doors before they closed, and rendered himself invisible, as he listened to the “Boss” give their speech, seeing the others strap explosives to the exits, sealing them inside.  

From what he could gather, there were at least 8 masks, each outfitted with an explosive, and six of them armed with some strange kinda gun-like device. The there was the big man himself, who called himself Slate. Speedrun remembered the walkie talkie speaker from the previous mask, and wondered if the big boss was in on the job, or possibly another victim, and someone else was speaking through them via the speakers.

Either way, his first priority was disarming all the masks he knew were armed, as well as the exits.  

He rolled his shoulders, watching as everything slowed to a complete standstill, his perception increasing as he started to make his move.

This heist was already unideal. Jordan reached that conclusion when the mask he placed was no longer in range of the network. A quick, high-pitched beep sounded, quicker than any normal person could hear or even perceive, triggered on each person’s headset when one of them reached out of range. Having slowly grown used to the painfully slow-paced nature of the world he now lives in, it was almost thrilling, to hear something that felt… a normal speed.

Either something managed to instantly block the connection of a single headset (as each headset in the bank beeped only once), or it was moved/destroyed inhumanly fast. The background sound of the beeping that he would have expected from the headset having been tampered with until it was far enough away to explode hadn’t occurred, which means the headset managed to get out of range in less than a split second for a cycle to begin, which shouldn’t be possible.

Then he noticed something in the corner of his eye; it was a flicker, but it was there after the door was closed. His eyes very slowly shifted to look directly at the blur, but he chose to act as it wasn’t there after a passing glance- he didn’t need to look twice to run through what he had seen; he’ll remember it fondly. In a world full of superpowers, really anything can be a possibility- but two things gave him a clue, the blur only appeared once there were no exits or ways out of the building, and the speaker was disarmed at an impossible speed. It was most likely a speedster. If they were a villain defending the bank the cameras would have either been destroyed to hide the fact the bank was protected by a mysterious force, or just defeat them, casualties damned. If it was a hero speedster, why weren’t they already defeating them?

It was probably the same reason why they had appeared in a single place after the doors closed- less movement available there was no possible way to grab all the bomb masks and make it out of the building in less than a second (they’re clearly already aware because of the first bomb being disarmed). Speedy wouldn’t know the bombs won’t go off here because of the proximity sensors, since the last one was out of range of any people before it even reached the first second… and if speedy were to create an opening by tearing a door open, they would tip off the one responsible and likely cause a different kind of disaster.

Best way to know if it was a speedster? Test their reflex.

Shortly after the charges were set, Jordan pressed a series of shoe buttons to activate encounter prompt 4, stage 1 – version 5.

The “Big bad” mask told them to point in Jordan’s direction, then said “there’s a hero here somewhere, I smell them. Show them we mean business, or else.”

Jordan shakily lifts a canister of the “poison” canisters, presses a switch on the canister, muttering "s-sorry about this, you'll be fine, I think..." and then tosses it to a group of hostages held up in a corner of the bank. As soon as it hits the ground (or stops), the compressed canister will rapidly spray all its contents in a radius of 10 feet around it. Of course, it wasn’t actually poison, just “nitro”, a variation of the emergency ‘medicine’, which should now suddenly cause anyone who makes skin contact with it to have a sudden but reasonably safe drop in blood pressure, and cause them to instantly fall unconscious.

If the speedster tries to move the canister though, he better do it slowly- anything faster than the speed of sound will jostle the contents enough to blow it up. It was still nitroglycerin, after all - as fast as the person might be, Jordan doubts they’ll be faster than an explosion of that caliber (faster than 22 times the speed of sound). The range will be small, but the blast will definitely burst eardrums, and from point blank, will tear an arm off. As much as he doesn’t want to kill, this plan is crucial to saving a lot more people.

Too slow and a regular person would fall unconscious from the cloud once it no longer moves, too fast and they blow up. There's no chance a speedster would figure that out. Win-win. Time for them to reveal themselves.

As it moves through the air, Jordan triggers the charges set on the bank vault, they need to make their move, now. There was no beep, no warning, just an explosion that pops the door open.

“Oh crap...”  

How was he spotted, another speedster?

Doubtful, he would’ve been able to see them, or, at the very least, a blur. Plus, another speedster wouldn’t need a whole team to rob this bank, they’d just slow them down. Could it have been the bomb he removed from the mask, he didn’t exactly take time to see if there was an alarm attached. That must have been it.  

Either way, he had to act now.  

As everything slowed to a stop, he made his moves.  

His first action, he dashed over to the front door, using his speed to deliver what he called his “velocity punch”, shattering the bulletproof glass, following up with a second punch to the outer door, doing the same. He ignored the stinging pain in his hand, as he definitely fractured a knuckle, possibly two.  

But there were lives in the line.  

He started with the unmasked hostages first, grabbing them and rushing them out of the bank. Given the level of care and planning that went into this job, Speedrun didn’t dare touch the grenade, lest it be trapped to shoot off lightning or something.  

Instead, he focused on removing the people from the danger.  

Once the unmasked hostages were cleared, and placed carefully across the street, seated at a one of the local restaurants, the speedster turned next to the masked hostages.  

This time, he knew he didn’t need to be discreet, he was already outed. He rushed through the group, carefully removing each mask, and rushing them outside, once again, hitting the open water before tossing them up into the air, one by one, so they would detonate in the sky.  

The final step, as he rushed back into the bank, was to remove the final hostages.  

One by one, until the “Boss” was the only one to remain, the bank was cleared.  

As “Jordan” was moved, he would, for the first time in his life, see things moving much faster than he could perceive, as everything became a blur. Then, suddenly, he was seated at a booth in the diner, among the others.  

As the grenade landed, spraying against the wall, and the charges on the bank vault detonated, the “Boss” suddenly found himself alone in the Bank.

“Wow...” Speedrun casually walked out of the vault, as if he had been in there the whole time. “That is a lot of money in there...” He pointed back to the vault. “Like, no wonder you chose this bank, man, cause I haven’t seen that much money in a bank vault ever!”  

The “Boss” jumped back as he spoke. “The only real victims here, are the Bratva, The Russian mafia...” He shrugged. "Banks this small should only have a capacity to hold roughly, what, fifty thousand dollars??” He paused, giving the speedster time to digest his words. “I had estimated that with the money laundering here, there would actually be five times as much."

“As much as you think yourself the hero, the robbers here will inevitably be arrested and face trail, and since the bank has been revealed to belong to the Mafia,  the Bratva will want to make an example out of these people; they'll make it so that a quick death would be more appealing than what's awaiting whoever wishes to mess with them.”

“Damn, this guy's thought of everything.” Speedrun thought to himself. This guy wasn’t saying to incriminate himself, while making sure Speedrun knew his plan.  

“Unless you let these guys go and let them run, they will be facing a death sentence before trial even begins, not even their families would be safe."

“That’s one helluva strategy...” Speedrun stated, before everything slowed to a stop, as he began his next play. He noticed the cameras, most likely linked to a secure room in the back.  

The first thing he needed was a key, so he rushed over to the restaurant, searching each of the guards, tellers, and others that weren’t in gray masks, until he found a keycard.

As well as several illegal firearms, drugs, and photographs of children that Speedrun wished he had never seen. All of which he would deal with later, but for now, he had a mission.  

Racing back to the bank, he scoured every inch, one, looking for potential stragglers, and hunting down the security room.  

Eventually, He found the room he was looking for, but getting in was going to be tricky. As of right now, the “Boss” wouldn’t see he was gone, but the Keycard didn’t exactly work at super speed.  

This is where another trick he learned would come into play, as he set the card into place, before running back to standing in front of the “Boss”. He moved back and forth like this for what seemed like forever, slowly inching each of his movements, meticulously making sure nothing seemed out of place to the “Boss”.

Eventually, the keycard unlocked the door, and Speedrun found himself in a room full of monitors, all showing different views of the bank. Entering the room, he pulled out a USB-drive like device, plugging it into the memory cache of the monitors.  

As he returned back to his position in front of the “Boss”, he continued, like he never left. “Get a bunch of innocent people, strap bombs to their faces, and force them to cooperate in your little heist, so if any heroes come, they would think they were just other criminals." Speedrun needed to get the man to confess, otherwise, everyone he just rescued would be treated as accomplices.

Fortunately, the link he plugged into the cameras had just finished connecting, giving Speedrun full access to the cameras from his HUD.  

"You don't understand it now, but you will later. What you've just done ruined the lives of at least a hundred people. No one was really gonna get hurt."

“I see” Speedrun continued to respond, but his sight was focused on the camera controls, as he made sure all possible angles were on the two of them, and audio was coming through clearly.  

"We can work together, you know. Take down the Bratva and make these streets safer again. Just look for my call-sign later, you'll know it when you see it."

“Oh, you’re good.” Speedrun muttered, before speaking back out to the “Boss”. “You want me to work with you, the man who just strapped live bombs to a group of innocent people, and forced them to rob a bank for him??” He shook his head. “Sorry, but heroes don’t put innocent lives in harms way.”  

The “Boss “ let out another sigh. “That is truly a shame...” He raised his gun. “With your powers, and my intellect, saving this city would have been trivial...” He shrugged, taking aim. “But, like many heroes before you, your altruism holds you back from seeing what needs to be done.”  

Before he could squeeze the trigger, the gun, and his mask, were both gone. He found himself on his knees, hand zip-tied behind his back.  

“Gotta admit, rigging a bomb to your own mask, just in case...” Speedrun was beside him, a hand on his shoulder, as he shook his head. “That was a bold move.”  

“Wait, you got the wrong guy...” The “Boss” looked up to the hero, seeing that he was no longer at risk of having his head blown off, he decided to speak up. “I’m just one of the hostages!!”  

“Right, Spencer Creel, arrested once for arson, and two other times for theft, both with the use of homemade explosives...” Speedrun had searched up the mans records, using the ID he had swiped from his pockets. “You know, you shouldn’t bring your wallet to bank heist.” He threw a wallet on the ground in front of the “Boss”.  

“Look, I was stupid in my youth, and ran with the wrong people...” Spencer pleaded. “But all I did was made homemade fireworks, and used them to distract the cops, I have never touched real explosives.”  

“Until now.”

“I’m telling you, you got the wrong guy!!”  

Speedrun looked towards the exit, as flashing blue lights appeared, indicating the cops had been called, and had arrived on the scene, most likely alerted by one of the hostages in the restaurant. “Well, you can tell that to the police, maybe they’ll believe you.”  

As cops started to cover the crime scene, Speedrun raced over to the Diner, making sure to zip-tie any of the Bratva guards and workers, before they decided to force a stand off.

"Thank you so much..." "Jordan" stated, appearing behind Speedrun. "If you hadn't come, we would have most certainly been killed."

Speedrun smiled to the man, shaking his hand. "All in a days work, my friend..." He looked over to the window, seeing the cops were already escorting Spencer out to a black truck. "You guys are safe, and the monster who forced you into this is going to face justice."

"Him..." "Jordan" had followed the heroes eyeline, seeing Spencer as well. "He's not the monster, he was being force into this, just like the rest of us."

Speedrun looked back to "Jordan", as cops started to file into the restaurant, grabbing up the people, escorting them out. Before he could inquire any further, one of the Officers took the hostage away, cuffing him and escorting him to the same truck as Spencer.

If Spencer was just another victim, then where was the real mastermind?

A few minutes later, the streets were crowded, as reporters caught wind of the situation, and passerbys started to pile in, hoping to get a good look at the young hero involved with stopping the high-stakes bank heist.  

Speedrun decided to put the questions aside for now, as he spoke with the reporters, giving reassuring speeches, reminding them that heroes were there to protect. He had practiced his talking points several times before with his fathers PR team at the lab.  

Eventually, the scene cleared, as the News got their scoop, the cops gathered everything they needed, and the streets were once again safe.  

Speedrun found himself racing through the city streets once again, returning back to the lab, as his hand had eventually started to become visibly swollen, and would need to be wrapped up for now.  

All in a days work for a hero.  

[End of part one]