Calling in Sick

[Null]

Will and whichever members of the X-Team had answered his call pulled up in front of the hospital -- if Will's intelligence was good, this is where the Brotherhood was keeping their home base.

"Right. We go in fast, and we hit them hard."

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie slides her helmet on, settling it in place and securing it. "You do realize this is St. Peters, right? And not everyone in there is a member of the Brotherhood or aware, right?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Then we wait until the basement to go hard," Tosh said with a scowl, Bruce cracking his currently imaginary knuckles. That puppet freak was going to pay for hurting Steph and taking his friend.

[Null]

Natalie slides her helmet on, settling it in place and securing it. "You do realize this is St. Peters, right? And not everyone in there is a member of the Brotherhood or aware, right?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, is this base? Well, I guess if they called Ollie Ollie Oxen-Free, we're going to have to turn around now."

[Natalie Denisov]

"I'm saying there are *civilians* in there and you're talking about going in hard. I saw the pictures of what happened in Maldon the last time you took the fight to them. This is a hospital. We can't do that here!"

[Null]

"We're not the ones who brought the fight to here, Natalie. Any collateral damage is their fault, not ours."

[Natalie Denisov]

"That's bullshit and you know it." Her power reaches out to the hospital network, worming its way inside as she tries to verify the presence of the Brotherhood.

[Null]

"That's bullshit and you know it." Her power reaches out to the hospital network, worming its way inside as she tries to verify the presence of the Brotherhood.

"I know you're not usually a field agent, so if you're too squeamish to move forward, you can wait here in the van."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"She's right Will. We... need to chill and be careful."

[Sean Hall]

Sean went with the X-team following his orders from the Headmistress to help where he could.

"I'm with Natalie on this one. We should probably avoid making tomorrow's headline about how the X-Men burned down a hospital full of innocent people to catch a handful of super villains," Sean said while double checking his spell components.

[Will Stanton]

"Yes, let's worry more about the newspapers than what the Brotherhood is doing. Good call, good call, I see everyone here has their priorities straight," Will said.

He did, admittedly, sink back into his chair sulking rather than barge out on his own.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Natalie manages to get images from some cameras, although a lot of them are transmitting either nothing or a black image. The few that are working properly show sparsely populated lobby and corridors. Everyone seems to be moving very slowly, perhaps carefully.

As she's searching through the network she receives a ping from Ashlie with a strange activation key that starts up a system in the arm of her suit.

Code: Select all

>> "I finished the miniaturized graviton cannon last night in case you encounter Void."
>> "It has enough charge for one shot and I would recommend only using it if you absolutely have to."
>> "And aim it away from anybody and anything you don't want scattered across the countryside."

[Natalie Denisov]

Code: Select all

"Hopefully we won't need it."

"Hospital seems to be parsely populated, at least the security cameras that are working. People are moving really carefully, but it does look like there are civilians in there."

[Null]

"Define 'carefully' for me."

[Natalie Denisov]

"Slowly. Carefully. Hard to tell. Based on how few of the cameras are working, probably fair to say that their security desk is either compromised or just doesn't care. I can't confirm the presence of the Brotherhood though, so I hope this tip is legit." She stands up, servos in the suit making small noises as they adjusted to motion. "The Headmistress geared me for dealing with Void, so if she's on-site, let me deal with her and I'll try to draw her away from the hospital."

[Null]

"Believe me, the tip is legit. She was begging to tell me by the end, and she knows what happens if she lied.

Can we go now, or do we need to write individual letters to each patient letting them know what's about to go down?"

[Sean Hall]

Or it could be a bloody trap...

"You have an appointment or something? Maybe left the gas on in your flat?" Sean asked as he exited the car.

[Null]

Or it could be a bloody trap...

"You have an appointment or something? Maybe left the gas on in your flat?" Sean asked as he exited the car.

"If you think either of that is more important than stopping the Brotherhood, be my guest and go and check. You know these guys are killers, right? And that half the hospital is probably already dead; probably more so while we're waiting here? We all OK with that? Yeah? Great."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"I think Aggro Will just wants to fight. Of course, Bruce is pretty keen on the punching today too," Tosh said as he followed.

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie hops out of the back of the van, looking over the building and trying to ignore the looks from any nearby pedestrians. "I hate going in blind," she mutters. Then she speaks up, "I'm going to go check out the service entrance. It's the least likely place for them to be keeping up appearances."

[Sean Hall]

Sean followed Natalie towards the service entrance.

"I'll try to mask our presence," Sean said grabbing a vial of translucent liquid from a pocket. He began to chant slowly and the spell coalesced around them. It probably felt odd, like insects crawling over them as the spell took effect. The idea behind the spell was to make them imperceptible. Light bent around them and people who tried to look at them found their attention directed to other things or forgotten tasks. So long as nobody tried anything violent or explosive the spell would probably hold.

[Null]

Will wasn't trying anything violent or explosive...yet.

He was, however, going up to the front doors of the hospital, his features and hair shifting to look more...well, normal. And generic.

[Narrator]

The spell seems to hold. Nobody seems to react to Will approaching the doors and once inside he can tell that the handful of people in the lobby are not doing very well. There's someone in a grey janitorial jumpsuit shuffling about, wearing bandages across his face like a blindfold, with blood dried a dirty brown in the fabric. The receptionist is sitting stock-still, everything from the shoulders down hidden by the desk, but something is very clearly not right. Her face is riddled with stitches and cuts stapled shut with surgical clamps. Above and below each of her eyes, set into her cheekbones and brow respectively are 4 additional eyeballs, creating a horrific look of two columns of three eyes glancing back and forth in different directions.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Once inside, Tosh looked around with horror.

"How has no one reported this?"

[Null]

"Anyone who would have reported this is long since dead.

Come on, let's try to figure out where the heck they're working from," Will said, carefully opening the front door.

[Sean Hall]

"I doubt anybody ever gets to leave," Sean said watching the receptionist.

[Narrator]

As the front door opens the receptionists eyes all snap towards it and all six eyes dart around as if she was looking for something. But Sean's spell holds for the time being, her eyes gliding off of the group of heroes and the door opening slipping form her mind as if it never happened.

[Null]

"Ooook. Good. Magic seems to be holding; thank you, Sean..." Will said.

"Gut feeling: they must be in a place where they're operating on patients, so...an operating room, then. Sounds as good a place as anywhere else to start looking?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"It does," Tosh said, eagerly following the hospital's handy guide signage in that direction.

"But I wouldn't call these poor people 'patients'," he added with muted anger, "This isn't medicine or valid science."

[Sean Hall]

Sean nodded at Will to acknowledge their thanks.

"Semantics and moral outrage later," Sean grumbled as he focused on holding the spell together while following along with the others.

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie seems busy as she looks around, trailing after the group. In reality, she's adjusting her sensors for whatever it is that Sean is doing.

[Reach]

They slowly make their way further into the hospital, following the signs until they reach the operating theater. The door is slightly ajar and as they approach they can hear voices. The one talking as they get within earshot is Reach. He's visible through the inch or two that the door is standing open, sitting on a stool with his feet propped up on the operating table in the middle of the room. He's holding some kind of oval sphere of white metal or plastic maybe 8 inches across that he's casually tossing back and forth between his hands as he's talking. The person he's talking to is somewhere on the other side of the room, not visible at this angle.

"...comes down to is that it's your choice. As long as you hate yourself, hate using your power you'll never learn how to control it. What you do is beautiful."

The response is too quiet to make out from the hallway.

"You need to stop letting others control you. Expecting you to fix them is just a more insidious way of exploiting you. Teaching you do be scared. They need you to be because it's the only way they can control you. And I get it. You despise what we did here. But here's the uncomfortable truth. If you really wanted to, then you could undo all of this. And you know it. You don't because you know damn well that they wouldn't be grateful. They would be absolutely terrified of what you're capable of."

[Null]

Will motioned to Tosh to take the other side of the door, so the two heavys could smash through simultaneously. Ideally, the ranged DPSers would then zap everyone behind them and they'd take everyone out before they knew what hit them.

[Sean Hall]

"How about I gift them something to think about before you go in?" Sean whispered after sliding next to Will against the wall on one side of the door.

[Null]

"Light 'em up, Dumbledork."

[Sean Hall]

Sean channeled energy into the new spell, which gradually diminished the invisibility/imperceptibility spell he'd conjured around the group. A semi-transparent orb formed in his hand, which filled with storm clouds. As the clouds built up inside the orb you could see within it the occasional flash of lightning causing the orb to vibrate with barely contained energy. Once the chant was done he tossed the orb into the room where it exploded in a burst of light, sound, and water as if for a moment those in the surgical theater had been placed in the heart of the storm cloud. Sean hoped the cacophony and bright flare would stun those inside the room at least for a few moments.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Bruce burst into the room and added a blast of lightning to the storm, aimed at Reach.

[Reach]

The imperceptibility fades and for a split second, as the storm coalesces into the orb Reach catches something out of the corner of his eye and turns his head the moment Sean lobs the orb. Reach rocks his stool to one side and topples himself over to slam into the ground behind the operating table, diving for cover. Then the orb explodes into a storm and clouds filled with water and flashing lights fills the room, obscuring most of it immediately.

[Manikin]

Bruce kicks open the door and sends a blast of lightning into the storm where it briefly illuminates the operating table and Reach's silhouette behind it. The lightning crackles throughout the clouds, revealing at least two other humanoid shapes in the chaos. One is cowering on the ground, the other seems fairly unfazed. The crackling lightning dies down and out of the clouds shoots one of Manikin's arms with enough force that there must be some kind of propulsion involved. It rockets right at Bruce and punches him in the head, knocking him sideways and sends him stumbling into the doorframe.

[The Void]

And as the storm inside the room slowly fades and Manikin's shape begins to show amidst the dissipating clouds there's a loud thud that shakes the ground. Followed by another and then a third that is accompanied by the floor in the hallway bursting upwards in a spray of concrete and linoleum floor as well as the black, white and grey of Void casually sailing through the air and landing on her tip-toes in the middle of the heroes.