Strange Encounter (Tag: Raindrop)

Blonde tresses pulled back into a tight ponytail, the little dynamo stayed concealed atop the hill, peering through her high speed binos. She'd  been to the South, North, and East of the building but now she sat West. Not a single pulse seemed to resonate in the abandoned warehouse miles from the outskirts of the city. For 7 hours Polly had prowled to note anything of significance. Not a peep. Not a car coming or going. No signs of movement. If this was some sort of trap, whatever bad element in there was pulling their hair out by now.

The anonymous tip had seemed promising though. They sounded genuine in their worry. In short, something nefarious was happening at the old warehouse that time and everyone else for that matter had long forgotten. At first she didn't bite on it, but then again what better place for some evil doers to hole up and run amok? A vacant, un-monitored building. Exactly. For all she knew there was probably some asshat mad scientist on the verge of blowing up himself and God knows what else. In the end, definitely worth checking out.

Polly was growing impatient though. She was starting to build a reputation as one of the few humans that could stand against a metahuman. The elite young woman was even interviewed by several TV stations and recently made a guest appearance on the Late Show. If she could tackle whomever or whatever was in the warehouse, it would boost her resume even farther. This lead her to refrain from notifying the proper authorities. At least for now. She would get closer soon, when darkness came, and play it by ear then.

A little more boredom ensued before the sudden flicker of dim light in the upstairs portion of the warehouse caught her attention. It had just passed from dusk to night, no time better than now. Clad in her skin tight blue suit--of-many-neat-capabilities, the nimble lady put on her night vision/darkvision shades and stealthily arrived at the western wall of the facility. She skirted the wall until she came upon a small, locked window. She peeked inside real quick and noted that there was some old pipes and lumber laying around but nothing foreboding.  

With fast hands like that of a level 20 Rouge, she searched for any traps on or in the window before expertly unlocking it. Being ever cautious, she slowly pushed it inward and crawled inside, then landed with the gracefulness of a cat and scanned her surroundings. There was a funk in the air; a pungent odor that had never before graced her sniffer. It wasn't suffocating or anything so she pressed on, placing a hand on each hip where her slew of gadgets and weapons were stashed. At the first hint of trouble, she would do what she does best... if need be.

to be continued by Raindrop.

Polly Pocket continued to skulk around the place, keeping to the shadows and making mental notes of every little nook and cranny of the building.  The further she got into it, the more it looked like there was activity going on. Recent tracks were on the moderately dirty floor, although she couldn't quite figure out what they were. The prints were small and sometimes human size, but nothing bigger, and seemed to go around in random directions. A faint smell of some type of coffee, perhaps Starbucks blend, was mingled in with the foul stinch of whatever that smell was that greeted her upon entry. She could tell she wasn't alone. She also had that creepy feeling that a thousand eyes were watching her.

She put her forearm over her nose to alleviate the smell and continued on, paying close attention to any areas that might have had security cameras in place at one time, with the obvious thinking that they were in use now. She found some around various corners and took them out with her silenced pistol as she stayed hidden in the shadows. it wasn't long until she was at the east side of the warehouse and finally gained some ground. Signs were still up from long ago, pointing arrows to the dock, the press machine, the basement. Yes!" She whispered to herself. The basement. If anyone was up to no good in a place like this, the basement was always a good area to hit up.

On her way there, though, she came upon the remains of someone. It was godawful. She immediately drew out her pistol and followed the trail, the odor getting thicker to the point it made her tough tummy churn a little. That's when she heard the roar of a monster and the screams of its unfortunate victim. Without thinking, she hurried toward the noise, abandoning her stick-to-the-shadows routine, but then again it was pretty dark in there even with her darkvision/nighvision shades on. After a quick jaunt, she approached a corner and peeked around.

What fell into sight sunk her heart. Some poor woman lay dead or at least badly injured in an elevator, the doors of the devise opening and closing repeatedly on her foot. The urge to rush to her aid was almost overwhelming, but Polly had learned from mistakes in the past, and knew this could be a trick although she highly doubted it was. Moving her hands swiftly, she removed "trinket" from her utility pouch and sent him on his flying journey. The hockey puck size devise was an affliction detector of sorts. It was synced in with Polly's shades and fed her real time readouts on the health, life, death, and degree of injuries one might have.

"Trinket" flew silently and buzzed around in a circle above the prone form. It scanned the entity below it and started feeding back the readout to Polly. Entity Origin: Unknown. Deceased: Negative. Life: Positive. Injuries: Minor. Polly frowned. She could tell from the light provided by the elevator that the blood, if it was real and belonged to the woman, was far too much to be labeled as a minor injury. To vex her more was the readout saying the entity's origin was unknown. To her, it looked like a human woman or a metahuman woman.

The Cutest of the Cute pressed the button on her belt and "trinket" flew back to her. She stowed him away and narrowed her eyebrows, mulling for a moment. This was fishy. Most likely some kind of trap. She knew one good way of calling someone out on a thing like this, though. Smirking, priding herself on not falling for the 95 percent sure trap, Polly pulled out a devise the size of a golf ball. It was studded with many, many electro-prongs. Once it was thrown against a solid object such as a wall, it would act sort of like a grenade except instead of lethal shrapnel exploding everywhere it would be taser like prongs packed with electro-charges.

The elevator was the perfect area to put it into action. If the woman didn't budge, make at least a little movement,  or make a single sound during the barrage, only then would Polly rethink her skepticism. She also figured this would draw the attention of that monster she heard. She was pretty damn certain that thing was legit. If she could make it come to her then all the better. Without missing another beat, she spun around the corner and hurled the nifty devise down the hall and it smacked against the back wall of the elevator.......

The reaction Polly received from the lady wasn't what she counted on nor liked. Polly was so sure that it was a trap. It had all the marks of one.  Yet the lady in the elevator didn't try to crawl away or scream or react violently when the hero's nifty little devise did its damage. Now she was surely vexed. Still airing on the aide of caution, she whispered "Sentry Alpha and Bravo, post." and two six inch long metal cylinders  spun to life from her belt and rose silently into the air.  

Their bodies, smooth at first, quickly peeled back to show several port holes which were lined with rays of enfeeblement ready to blast away if a foe was to engage their master.  They were strong enough to incapacitate a medium to large adult male  and a light to medium metahuman. Monsters, however, like the one lurking somewhere in the vicinity, were something they needed to be tested against. The two devices hovered above her about two feet, one to the right and one to the left and scanned for anything out of the ordinary as Polly slowly made her way forward.

The hero wasn't stupid. She made her approach at an angle, keeping just enough of the corpse in her sights as she finally closed the distance and placed her back against the wall next to one of the repeatedly opening doors. Sentry Alpha posted a readout across her shades. Elevator infrastructure fail. Floor hazard. Concealed by unknown origin entity. The Cutest of the Cute wasn't about to just prance on in the elevator. Not now. Not ever.  Polly growled and abruptly grabbed the dead woman by the ankle and pulled her from the elevator.  

That's when she saw the hole in the floor. Polly quickly stepped back out of view in case the monster she heard earlier had ventured down the hole and was seconds away from shooting large tentacles out from the hole to try and grab her. Polly wisely kept only part of her head visible to the hole from outside the elevator. After a few seconds of contemplating, Polly ordered Sentry Alpha to enter the hole and investigate, then ordered Sentry Bravo to perform roaming patrol down the hall to her left then to her right.

It was starting to don  on Polly that the dead woman was probably used by the monster as bait for her or god forbid someone else who may not be as formidable as the blue suit clad hero. Looking to hopefully connect some more dots, Polly turned to where she had slid the poor dead woman.....

Polly nearly jumped out of her skin when she turned and found the dead woman alive and well, with all of her appendages attached, looking sprite and a bit cocky. With eye blinding speed Polly unholstered her pistol and aimed it at her. "Don't f***ing move. Wh... wh... what the hell? H-h-how?? Nevermind, just stop right there." Polly was utterly mind blown. Luckily for the hero, the mysterious lady wanted to talk instead of die, so Polly let her have her say in order to buy time. It was, in effect, a stall tactic on Polly's part.

Meanwhile, Sentry Alpha carefully scanned the underside of the elevator but noted nothing of importance until it calculated some slight movement in the cracks. The cylinder zeroed in on the faint source that it had dubbed hostile and fired off several rays of enfeeblement to render the source incapacitated or dead. It worked, or so it seemed, and the sentry began to sweep further down. Its counterpart, Sentry Bravo, had the unfortunate hand in all of this and wound up running into some acid orbs on its trip back to its master. Doing as it was programmed to do, it fired some rays at them.

During all of this, the lady continued to speak as Polly slowly lowered the gun and seemed to be genuinely interested in what the woman had to say, it was as if Polly was hanging on every word the lady said. Of course this was not really the case. Polly was merely plotting a ruse. As she slowly lowered her gun and maintained good eye contact with the woman, the hero stealthily procured a black colored egg size item out of her belt-of-many-things. "If your boss wanted to speak of a business arrangement he could have simply contacted me by the many ways you can on social media. His people could have called my people and we could have had brunch." Polly slowly shook her head in disappointment. "The fact that he has stooped so low as to make an elaborate trap means the only business arrangement he wants is one in which he gets what he wants and I get not a damn thing out of it, except maybe to live, right? I mean, that's usually how these things go."

Polly noted the floating orbs milling around but wasn't too concerned. Her suit may not be acid proof but it is pretty resistant to such things and would allow her some time to get deconned if her suit was overloaded with them. That obviously meant she would have to escape first. The Cutest of the Cute was starting to grow emboldened now. The lady had not tried to attack her although she easily could have when she was preoccupied. This meant one of two things. 1: the lady was scared to fight Polly but was playing it off really good or... 2: She was under orders to not kill Polly even if she had the ability and motivation to.

Polly was essentially in a win win situation as odd as it sounded. Polly's initial jumpy reaction vanished and a smirk rolled over her pretty features. "And, uh, you hurt me? Melting corpse? Harm my pretty face?  Are you talking hand to hand combat? HA! Do you even lift? Puh-lease. You sad, misguided imbecile.  That's the thing with you metahumans and meta-whatevers. All these crazy powers and you think you're some sort of demi god. Your arrogance so often betrays your flaws, however small those flaws might be. That's how I have and will continue to defeat bigger and badder foes than you, ma'am. Take right now for example." Polly placed the gun back in her holster, making sure the lady eyed it as she did so. With her other hand, though, she extended it over the hole in the elevator and held the egg shaped device by two fingers, threateningly.

"You were so wrapped up in your little comments that you had no idea about this little joker did you?" Polly head motioned to the black egg shaped device. "G4JU8. New explosives combination my parents were working on before they perished. I completed it. This little booger can, upon impact, vaporize an entire first floor of a building without harming the other floors. Now, if memory serves me correctly, you just instructed me to take the elevator down to the basement. So clearly your boss and probably more... errm... things like you are lounged around down there. If I drop this, they die. Plain and simple. Correct?" Polly released the egg device for a split second but then caught it with the same fingers and smirked mischievously at the lady who rose form the dead. "Uh oh, almost lost it there, hehe." The hero felt so in control.

"So here is how it is going to be. You are going to back away from me, call off these floating things, then you and your goons and your dweeb of a boss are going to flee. Meanwhile, I will be walking out the front door, where I will promptly call in a few fav-" Without an iota of warning, Polly hurled the egg shaped device at the lady's feet. It exploded into a huge, all encompassing thick black fog that engulfed the hall, them, and the elevator. It made seeing impossible. Even Polly with her advanced dark-vision shades was blind. The Cutest of the Cute had been bamboozling the lady the entire time. Now was her chance to escape whatever insane cult like activity she had bumbled into. Having great navigational sense would hopefully prove fruitful. She went low and somersaulted and rolled. If her coordination was right, she'd wind up at the corner of the hallway where she first caught sight of the dead lady in the elevator. Then it would be a foot face that she would easily win.