Friday Night Fights

[Hellbound]

Hellbound turned, quickly, at the intrusion and prepared himself for a fight. Adrenaline raced through his system but he quickly got himself under control when he saw who it was. That Jack guy, from last night and this morning's phone call. Moira had asked him to show up, ad he sure as hell didn't waste any time about it.

"Not a fragging clue." Hellbound admitted. "We woke up this morning and found... that."

His hand gestured randomly towards the bloodshed. Even as stalwart as the fighter seemed, even he was shaken by how violent the scene had been.

"Whatever it was, we think it went through here."

[Moira Morley]

Moira was hot on the trail and she didn't want to give it up. He acknowledged that she was spoken to with head nods and shakes rather than answers. Even when Jack got there she kept going following the trail until it stopped at the tunnel entrance. She almost seemed to ignore Jack and O'Ren's conversation to climb up the ladder and enter the mouth of darkness. A healthy dose of curiousity, mixed with a bit of fear, drove her to find out what was in there.

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack peered into the gloom, the darkness a welcome relief from the oppressive light outside. "Maybe we should call the police," he said doubtfully. "Or the Freedom League. If whatever's down there did that kind of damage, we don't want to be the only ones looking for it. There are some pretty terrible monsters in this city." He took off his sunglasses in the dark, peering after Moira.

[Hellbound]

Hellbound eyed Jack in mild surprise. He remembered the grip that the man had, there was more strength than he was showing. How much, though? Enough to go chasing after monsters? It was a tough call.

"I think we can handle it." He said at last.

There was a glimpse of Moira's shapely bottom going up and over the edge of the ladder. Beyond was the utility tunnel, pipes and tubes running down the walls off into the gloom, and that's where their quarry had apparently fled.

"Now, c'mon, before we lose our scenery."

With a few quick, sure movements, Hellbound was up the ladder and in pursuit of the divine figure disappearing before him.

[Avenger Assembled]

Moira and a pit-fighter, heading into the dark against a monster. Muttering a curse inside his mind, Jack began heading after O'Ren down into the pit below. Having made his decision, something in his demeanor changed; his eyes hardening and his footsteps growing lighter. Tired, blotchy club-hopper or not, Jack seemed to know what he was doing.

[Hellbound]

That's what Hellbound wanted to see, noticing the change in Jack's attitude. So the guy was deliberately holding himself back, maybe even trying to maintain one of those secret-identities that capes seemed to be so in love with. The man could easily turn out to be just about anyone in disguise, it's not like O'ren knew enough about the super-world to figure out who.

Personally, Hellbound never seemed to have time or the inclination to maintain a private life. He quite simply was who he was, and anyone meaning to target the people around him would have to get through his own fists first. But it wasn't like the young fighter had anyone particularly close to him, or at least he didnt think that he did...

Watching the delightfully swaying form of Moira move carefully through the service tunnel, he's not as sure of that this morning as he'd been earlier yesterday evening.

"So what's this deal your boss lady wants to lay on me?" He asked, trying to get his mind onto more professional matters. Now wasn't exactly the time to go scooping Moira up for a quick rendevous in the shadows, which was more along the lines of what he wanted to do at the moment.

[Moira Morley]

Still ahead of the her two companions, Moira looked cautiously around the area she was walking through. Anything that could rip through human bodies like what she saw needed her undivided attention.

The nervousness would have gotten to her if she were by herself, but she had two proven superhumans with her. And it wasn't like she couldn't take a blow herself.

She kept her mind at ease thinking of the night before. O'Ren would be hard to just drop after that. Not just in the fact that he was her combat trainer, but also that he was a great lover.

Moira's serene thoughts ended in shock and horror when she spotted the first in a trail of many 'clues'. A half eaten body of a young girl from the party she missed last night hangs out from a hole in the side of the tunnel. The girl's arms grasp on to the bloody stumps that used to be where he legs are. Forever in a silent scream she remains.

[Avenger Assembled]

"She wants you, O'Ren, and she's willing to pay you well for it. Melinda can reward her friends very...very grandly." He fell silent as they approached the corpse. Jack walked up to the body with only a faint look of disgust on his barely visible face as he looked over the corpse in the dripping gloom. "I've seen things like this before," he muttered almost inaudibly as he cracked open a flashlight to shine around the darkened tunnel. "All cities feed on themselves, one way or another. Freedom just has its own way of doing things. Listen, if either of you have any weird freaky super-senses, now the's time to tell me."

[Hellbound]

"Yeah, I wish." Hellbound answered him, gesturing in the weak glow of the utility lights. "I can barely see in this dump as it is. 'Might be nice if I spontaneously gained the ability to sniff out monsters or even see in the dark, but you know what they say about wishin' in one hand and crappin' in the other."

He wondered, for a moment, what he'd call such a power if he did develop some sort of extra-sensory perception. The term 'Hellavision' came to mind, but he shook his head and dismissed it as just silly.

"Wants me how, exactly?" Hellbound returned to the business portion of the discussion. "I might be Freedom City's number one super-hunk, but that don't mean I'm anybody's high-priced boy-toy."

Right now he wasn't sure if Jack's boss wanted to represent him professionally, needed him to do enforcement work for some criminal organization or even just wanted to decorate her bedroom in a new shade of studly. He was willing to listen to offers, though, and had a few terms of his own to present if the deal was honest.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Professionally. You're...not her type," Jack replied flatly. "Not that way, anyway. She appreciates a powerful man who can take care of business. Don't you think a sponsor would work to your advantage?" He gazed into the eyes of the dead woman, a hard-to-read look on his own face as the wet at the bottom of the tunnel pooled against his shiny black leather shoes. "We'll talk about that later."

[Hellbound]

"I dunno, man. 'Seems to me like this is about to turn into one hell of an audition."

Hellbound didn't really want to think about what'd happened to the girl. In his mind, this isn't what violence was about. Beating on people was supposed to be fun, lighthearted and something the whole family could enjoy. It wasn't until something sick and twisted like this came along that he really felt the desire to snap someone's neck.

"I guess we should look on the bright side. There's not a lot of directions this bastard could have gone. Anything on the other side of the body?"

He was looking towards the hole as best he could, but with the lighting conditions and not being at the actual corpse it was a wasted effort. Jack might be able to get a better look beyond the dead girl, however.

"How're you holding up?" Hellbound asked Moira. This might have been more than she bargained for. As adamant as his own nerves were, this was starting to get to him. Someone without a lot of experience with the rough stuff might not be faring quite as well.

[Moira Morley]

Moira watched the body as Jack got closer to examine it, as if were going to jump up at any moment. Her thoughts on the situation were equal parts confusion mixed with uneasiness and maybe a touch of fear. Who would do such a thing? Why would they take such gruesome measures? How long would it take to catch up to it? Or would it find them first?

She snapped out of her thoughts when O'Ren directed his own question towards her. She crossed her arms and looked to him with a worried smile, "I'm fine." Keeping her words short didn't much help her tension, but if she would of said anymore she would of sounded like a nervous wreck.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'll tell you what," replied Jack, "I'll put in a good word for you." He peered down into the hole, raising his flashlight to cast a glow deep down the shaft. "I'm surprised so much of the body is intact," he muttered, barely audible to the other two. "Unless this is a larder for when hunting runs dry. It can't always make kills like that; it'd have the whole city down on it."

[Hellbound]

Or it's leading us into a trap... Hellbound thought to himself. The concern wasn't spoken aloud, though. If the other two started thinking along those lines then they might decide to call off the hunt. That was the last thing he wanted at this point. Something was down here shredding human beings and, apparently, keeping the tastier parts for itself. There was no way O'Ren was going to pass up a chance to knock the teeth out of a mouth that had hobbies like that.

"That was probably a pretty big score, last night." He admitted, stepping down the tunnel a few paces while the other two examined the body. The light was still poor enough that he couldn't see very far, just a few dim bulbs in their cages glowing against the ceiling, but if anything was coming back to check on the body he wanted to be the first to say hello.

"I figure it had to be a couple hours before dawn, after most of the party had gone home and only a few stragglers were still cleaning up. 'Could be wrong, though. It didn't look like a ton of kids got killed out there, but that would probably depend on how fast this thing eats. I can't imagine it gets many opportunities to find a good half dozen snacks in one place at one time so it sounds reasonable that it'd stash some of the leftovers somewhere."

Hellbound knew that some of the capes out there could have taken one look at the death scene and pulled all sorts of details out of the tracks. They probably would have estimated a time for the attack as well as the number of victims and what have you, but he just wasn't that observant. It'd looked like a chaotic mess to him and, frankly, he'd rather not take his training to where he was forced to stare at messes like that.

"What ever happened to the good old days when bad guys put on green derbies and held up banks with laughing gas? I don't remember ever reading about The Raven finding a bunch of slaughtered bodies first thing in the morning."

Hellbound turned back to look towards Jack, remembering what he'd started his last piece of the conversation with.

"And by the way, I thought you were supposed to be putting a good word in for her? She's the one trying to get me on her side, not the other way..."

He was cut off at that point by the sound of a single, echoing splash further down the tunnel and the harshly hissed words "Oh crap!", as someone or something moved in the darkness ahead.

[Moira Morley]

Unbeknownst to O'Ren, Moira was already thinking about every bad thing that could happen. She had no plan of calling off the hunt. Though the gruesome talk between Jack and and O'Ren didn't help her morale any.

O'Ren's sudden discovery of something further in almost made her jump out of her skin. She quickly looked to him then to Jack, then back to him. She couldn't leave O'Ren alone. Quickly racing to his side she peered into the darkness, "What was that?"

[Hellbound]

An arm reached out to Moira as she stepped up to Hellbound, offering her a seemingly-safe place to stand.

"Crap if I know." Hellbound answered, honestly. He was peering towards the noise, as if trying to pierce the gloom by sheer willpower alone, but so far wasn't having much luck. The sound of running footsteps could be heard and a figure dashed through one of the dim circles of light being cast by the overheads farther down the tunnel.

"Hey... who was that?" He asked rhetorically, starting to run after the intruder. "C'mon, let's go find out. You with us Jack?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack swore suddenly, explosively, his voice tearing through the obscenities of multiple languages as easily as his fists through paper. He shone the light in the direction of the running figure and called, "Roman Michaels! We're here to help you! Run this way!" Jack settled onto the balls of his feet, bending in a predator's crouch as he watched further down the tunnel with the eagerness of a hunting cat.

[Hellbound]

"Screw you!" Roman called back over his shoulder. "I don't wanna die!"

The television show host ran, as best he could, from what he thought was the threat. Several people who'd mysteriously appeared around a slaughtered body so soon after his own people had been killed? They had to be with the monsters, or whatever had ripped through the film crew. In his fevered and panicked mind there just wasn't any explanation.

So upset was he at the appearance of the heroes that he didn't even see the low-hanging pipe jutting from the wall, about head height, stretching over part of the tunnel. Granted, Roman was wearing a hard hat as he was required by insurance, but that didn't stop him from making solid contact with the heavy iron. A resounding 'clang' could be heard as the tall man almost knocked himself senseless and fell to the wet floor of the tunnel.

"Ow..." He complained from his prone and no-longer-running-madly position.

[Moira Morley]

Accepting O'Ren's invitation would be a relaxing thought, but Moira didn't want him to feel her fear. She politely declined with a shake of her head, "I'm good." She hacked a cough after taking a deep breath. With all the smells of sewage and death around, it wasn't a pretty smelling thing to be breathing. She wondered how Jack and O'Ren weren't gagging to death down here.

When the quick angry words started flying, she stayed every silent. She could of said something, in fact she wanted to do so. Though she also wanted to keep her cool. So she kept bottling her uneasiness.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I like his show," Jack admitted under his breath. He strode through the tunnel fearlessly after the fallen host, water sloshing beneath his feet as if he'd been born there. "If anything jumps out at me, I'm trusting you two to take care of it. We need to get him out of here."

[Hellbound]

"What show?" Hellbound asked. "You mean like on TV? You gotta be kidding me."

He didn't watch much television, and really couldn't afford cable even if he did, so he had no idea who the guy was. Having never watched the show 'Back-Breaking Labor', Hellbound didn't recognize the beloved reality show host Roman Michaels. He also didn't know about his popular series about "...exploring America looking for people who weren't afraid to break their backs  hard-working men and women who earned an honest living doing the kinds of labor that make civilized life possible for the rest of us."

Because of that, he also had no idea why some television star would be wandering around down here looking to get himself killed.

"The hell are you doing down here, man?" Hellbound asked the floor-bound host.

He was letting the other two help out Roman while watching for threats to come out of the darkness as Jack had asked. That was a comfortable role for him, waiting for the sharp teeth to glint out of shadows and claws to scrabble against concrete. Hellbound was ready and waiting to step into harm's way, almost twitching in anticipation of some decent action.

Michaels, on the other hand, was almost out of his mind with fear and only now coming to realize that the three new people weren't here to kill him. Though they didn't look like they were dressed in the colorful costumes of the superheroic world, it was starting to dawn on him that this might be his best chance for survival.

"Hey, look..." He'd managed to get back on his feet, a bruised lump starting to form on his head from where he'd hit the pipe and his dislodged helmet laying on the wet floor nearby. "I don't know you guys, but you seem to know me. Not the first time that's happened... but we were down here scouting locations to shoot a segment on the Freedom City Rat Catchers and my whole production crew's dead. If I hadn't been off taking a leak, I'd probably be dead too. So if you don't mind me asking, what the hell's going on here and who are you people?"

He was babbling a bit, but that wasn't much of a surprise. The man was in shock from what had been an incredibly traumatic experience. That he was even capable of rational thought at the moment was fairly impressive.

As far as getting him out of here? Hellbound didn't think that sounded like a good idea and he said so. Taking the time to escort Roman back to the tunnel entrance would give them the chance to lose the monster's trail and let it (or them), kill again. Granted, there was only one way for it to go right now, but eventually the tunnel they were in would lead into more service-ways and the real infrastructure of the city would be encountered. If they let them (or it), get into that labyrinthine network then they'd never find the damn thing (or things).

Sending him back alone wasn't a great idea, either. They didn't know for sure that the killer/s hadn't doubled back or were laying in wait for another juicy morsel to wander past. Leaving the guy to his own devices sound like a sure way to serve him up as the next appetizer -- the very mention of which made the frightened host's face go pale with fear.

"We gotta bring him with us." Hellbound suggested. "That way we can keep an eye on him without losing the trail. It's the only way, man."

[Moira Morley]

An alive person, Moira thought, Hey, isn't that the guy who does the show on TV? The one with the crap and pig slop? She found out here assumption was correct when Jack and O'Ren go to see the man.

She quickly caught up with the three guys in time to catch the conversation about bringing Roman along. She nodded to each suggestion. Anything to make this quicker.

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. "Listen," he said fiercely, "Whatever's down here, it's not the only predator in the sewers. This is no place for a civilian, especially not with blood in the water. The two of you know how to fight, I already know that. I'll take Michaels up and meet with you later. I can even call in a friend, come back with reinforcements."

[Hellbound]

Getting the softie out of here?, thought Hellbound. That might not be such a bad idea. On the one hand, they'll be losing and extra fighter in Jack, but at the same time they'd be ridding themselves of a liability. Having Roman around would be a drag, someone that would take time and energy to keep alive; not a good anchor around their neck in pressure situations.

"Yeah, that might be best. Get the guy out of here while we go forward. I don't like splitting our forces, though."

He also didn't like Jack being an unknown quality. He still knew so little about that man's abilities and strengths, but Moira was a physical element he was much more familiar with. He'd had a chance to experience her performance on a most intimate level, so he knew exactly where she stood in a fight. With the mystery man out of the way then he felt a little more sure about how they'd approach any threats they might come across.

Plus there was the comment of reinforcements? Jack had friends that he could bring down to help them out? That might not be a bad idea. While Hellbound didn't like the idea of anyone taking his 'kill' out from under him, there were real lives at stake at the moment. This wasn't exactly the time to be a strutting jackass, but rather someone able to actually do some good for once.

"How long before you can make it back?"

As the conversation went on, Roman flipped back and forth inside of his own head. On the one hand, his life was in danger. He'd already lost some good friends tonight in a most bloody way, but on the other... he did have his pocket camera. Pulling this out now, he powered the small device up and checked the battery status.

"You know guys..." Roman spoke in his deep, confident voice. "It might actually be good to get some evidence on what these things are. For... you know... later analysis?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack obligingly offered to take the camera and pass it off to one of the people sticking around. Despite his fierce tone with the others, he treated the unhappy TV host with a great deal of respect. It wasn't hard to guess that Jack might be a fan. "We'll get the son of a bitch, Mr. Michaels," he said vehemently. "I promise. And we'll make him pay for what he did to your Trusty Crew." He gently took the man's arm to try and urge him upstairs, a look of real sympathy on his face. "I know being a fan isn't the same as being a true friend, but I've always admired your work and what you do. That show you did on the mortuary industry was very ground-breaking."