The Same Thing We Do Every Night ... [IC]

[angrydurf]

Jack slammed his tormentor into the wall again as he gurgled and feebly struggled to free himself from the vampires iron grip. As his head struck the wall again his eyes rolled back into his head and his struggles ceased. Jack now clung to the limp unconcious form of the mad doctor.

[Electra]

"Stop it!" Stesha yelled over Jack's rambling, stepping forward with the gun still leveled, though it was unclear whether she remembered she had it. "Jack! Stop it right now! We need him to get Derrick out of that field. It's hurting him! Pay attention!" She waved the gun at him, increasingly agitated, and remembered she was holding it. She leveled it again, this time purposely on Jack. "Put him down. We have work to do!"

[alderwitch]

"It's been less than four hours," Taylor said softly, her voice a low and agnonized undercurrent beneath the shouting. She could see Stesha levelling the gun at Jack out of the corner of one eye but she kept her focus on Jack. Slowly she pushed her hood back, and peeled down the mask. There were probably cameras down here but, frankly, Taylor didn't care at the moment. "And I do know what you're capable of. Now."

"I still trust you." Taylor took another step towards him, hands lifted up and palms empty. She locked her gaze with his, her expression open and compassionate. Taylor was a painfully private person. Even around her closest friends, she usually remained at least a little aloof but Taylor abandoned her usual reserved air. For once, she wanted him to see the emotion in her eyes, "I haven't said it since the plaza, but I trust you. You are more than this. You are so much more than this. Even in the face of extreme provocation, you can do the hard thing, Jack."

Taylor stretched her gloved hand towards his face, eyes dark in her very pale face, "Will you please put him down?"

[Cyroa]

Derrick leaned weakly against his own custom prison. "Avenger. You're alright. Just..." he was going to say take a deep breath but that was rather pointless, "take a moment. It was a lie. You revealed nothing, even in that machine, that could give anyone away. But just remember who you are. You are a hero. A better man," a term he used for most sentient beings so it applied to heroic vampire, "than this. Please put him down. It's over. Phantom is hurt and she needs you to focus. She's right. I've been here the whole time. Be strong. Be Avenger." Woo, he was feeling a little lightheaded from the stresses his body had endure. But he still cared more for his friends than he did himself. "Be careful of the controls. This thing absorbed quite a bit of my energy. Even partially charged, it's release would be...bad."

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack dropped the unconscious scientist, the madman dropping to the metal floor beneath their feet like a sack of wet potatoes. He looked down at his hands, blood dripping down his fingers to cover the palm. "God. God, there's already so much blood on my hands..." He staggered, almost falling backwards onto Taylor as he tried to right himself. He looked at her gratefully, unable to say the words that would need to be said later, before finally turning to the controls of the great machine. "What do I need to do?"

[Electra]

"You already knocked the guy who knows how to work it unconscious," Stesha said impatiently, "wake him up and make him turn it off!" She ran over to where Derrick was imprisoned behind the forcefield. She put her hand on it, shuddering at the unpleasant but painful sensation. "We're going to get you out, really soon," she promised Derrick. "Just hold on." She took a seed out of her pocket and tried to push it through the field, but it wouldn't go through, any more than her hand would. Thinking for a minute, she sat cross-legged on the floor and fiddled through the settings on the gun, then set the seed on the ground and pointed the gun at it. This villain seemed like the sort of guy who might like to be able to shoot at people he'd already locked up, so maybe the gun would go where other things wouldn't. Taking careful aim, she shot the growing seedling with the beam of energy, then carefully, carefully manipulated it towards the forcefield, then right up against it.

[angrydurf]

The seed floated easily up under the manipulation of the beams from the gun. As it hit the side of the forcefield the beams started to spark against the field the discharge burning the seed to ash in seconds as the gun shook in her hand the readouts on the device going wild from the feedback of the two energies interacting.

[alderwitch]

"Let me see if I can just port in there. It might be a bit of a squeeze." Rather than risk the cloak getting caught in the field, Taylor dumped it off to the side before she floated close enough to the field as she dared without scorching herself. Stealing herself for what might be a painful journey, Taylor phased out and then blinked in the field right next to Dark Star. So far so good. Of course, to pick up Dark Star and take him out, she had to solidify.

The onslaught of gravtic forces once she materialzed was almost enough to send her to her knees. It was a new and truly agonizing sensation to stand inside a field that was trying to draw out energy that she simply did not possess. Taylor staggered, but managed to wrap her arms around Dark Star's waist. Gritting her back teeth against the onslaught, Taylor yanked them both back through the void. The stark absence of sensation was even more disorienting than usual.

The landing was no where near her usual grace as they ended up in a bit of a heap on the ground but Dark Star was out of the machine, at least.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh, thank God," said Jack with relief, dropping to his knees over the fallen Derrick and Taylor. "Are you all right?" He checked them both out as best he could, trying to at least separate them from each other's tangled bodies. He needed some tiny fragment of order in his life after the terrible chaos of the day.

[Electra]

Stesha scrambled over as well, bringing the gun along with her but largely ignoring it. She set it down to pat Derrick's face with both hands. "Are you all right?" she asked worriedly, touching his forehead, then the pulse in his neck. "Can you change forms, or do you need some help?" She spared Jack a glance. "Shouldn't you be watching the bad guy to make sure he doesn't do something horrible when he wakes up?" she asked pointedly.

[Cyroa]

Derrick groaned as he and Taylor collapsed in a pile. Being in pain, solid, and tangled up with a half-naked girl (who was romantically involved with his friend) that wasn't Stesha was definitely not his best moment. He would have tried to untangle himself but there was an awful lot of exposed skin and he didn't want to touch anything he wasn't supposed to touch. Thankfully Jack separated them. But despite all that, he was more concerned for Taylor's health.

He managed a weak smile as Stesha filled his vision. "My hero," he said somewhat painfully. "I'll be fine. Check Taylor." He might be battered and bruised for hours in that machine, but he was worried what it could have done to Taylor. "I just need a moment to change. Then we need to get every part of this machine and data it collected together. It's still charged at least partially and potentially very dangerous. I'm going to get it out of the system before something goes wrong. And while the...recordings of Jack didn't reveal much, I wouldn't want them to fall into anyone's hands. We'll take those recordings too." He looked over at Taylor. "Thanks for the rescue." He turned back to Stesha for a quick, if somewhat painful, kiss. "Thank you too." He sighed, trying to focus enough to change. It was likely to take a little longer this time.

[angrydurf]

As Derrick focused on becomeing Dark Star the others took note of a growing high pitched whine coming from the direction of the recently vacated gravtic draining device. Looking that direction showed the forcefield cage and the energies it contained had shifted to a violent red. The nearby votroll panel was ablaze with flashing warning lights, aparently the device did not handle being suddenly deprived of its power source very well.

In the corner where avenger had dropped him the crazed 'Doctor' slowly pushed himself to his hands and knees trying to clear his head after the savage beating at the vigillantes hands.

[Avenger Assembled]

Jack moved with precisely controlled mayhem, striding quickly up to the slowly rising villain. He smashed his fist solidly into the back of the man's head, driving him into the ground with a solid noise. And with that, he bent down and scooped the fallen mad scientist, throwing him over his shoulders. No one else dies. He'd made that promise to himself a long time ago. "Everybody out!" he yelled, running for the door.

[Electra]

"Jack!" Stesha yelped, horrified. "Why did you do that? We can't run away, it's a black hole machine! Who knows how big it will blow up! Now he can't shut it down! We have to do something!" She reached into her bag and pulled out a handful of dried leaves, sniffed them, then gave some to both Taylor and Derrick. "Eat that," she told them both urgently, "it'll make you feel better." Probably, anyway.

[Cyroa]

Derrick took the leaves and ate them without thinking, focusing harder at the dangerous sounds from the machine. He dug deep for reserves untouched (helped by Stesha's curatives no doubt). A moment later, Derrick was gone and Dark Star remained. He floated to his feet. "Avenger, get Fluer out of here! Either by cloak or running, but go! I'm going to open a wormhole to deep space. It'll get pulled through instantly, before it goes off." It was a given that letting 'Black Hole Device' fire/misfire/explode on or even near a planet or solar system would be bad, partially charged or not. "But everyone and everything in the room who's solid will be going with it! Time to move my friends!" As an added plus, it'd suck all that darn tech that had messed with Avenger as well. He quickly moved over to the machine, getting ready. He'd given them a few moment to at least clear the room but that was all the time they could spare...

[angrydurf]

The whine of the malfunctioning machine was getting more shrill and the holding chamber began to spark and smoke as alarms sounded throughout the base a digitized voice calling for immediate evacuation of all personel in several languages. Dark Star could feel the tug of the gravtic energies as they began to slip out of control inside the machines containment unit, there wasn't much time to spare.

[alderwitch]

"Fleur can teleport herself out. Avenger's on his way out the door." Taylor said as she pushed herself up and picked up her cloak. She turned insubstantial as she stood and swirled it over her shoulders once more. Thanks to Fluer, she could even see straight again. "Don't worry about me. If any of these machines tearing free causes problems, I might be able to help. You'll be busy holding that portal open."

[Electra]

Stesha picked up the gun for safekeeping and levered herself up off the floor, looking with alarm at the smoking machinery. She hurried over to Dark Star and pressed a kiss against her own fingertips, then touched them to the edge of the blankness where his cheek was not. "Be careful," she told him worriedly. Not wasting another moment, she pulled a vine out of her pocket and used it to transmit away, well out of the building but close enough that she could keep an eye on it. Now was not the time to get in the way with foolish heroics.

[Cyroa]

Dark Star smiled, not that it would show much, at Stesha. He waited a second until she was gone before nodding to Phantom. He wasn't overly concern given her abilities but still, this wasn't exactly the safest thing to be doing. No that there were a lot of options.

The instant Avenger and Stesha left the room, Dark Star reached out and altered the gravity of the entire room, reversing it just enough to get the machinery off the floor. What he was going to do next was really a bad idea but, again, there wasn't much choice. The moment it was off the floor, Dark Star released his built up energies causing a massive portal to open up below it, laying 'flat against' the floor. The sheer amount of energy he dumped into it broke through the teleportation nullification field.

The portal opened into deep space, light years from anything. Explosive decompression, especially when the hole is 25 feet across, has some serious pull. Howling, the wind rushed out, sucking everything that wasn't nailed down (and most things that were) except for two insubstantial beings watching right out the hole. The instant the machines were through, Dark Star forced the portal closed just in case. "If we want to watch and make sure it's destoyed, I suggest something slightly father away." This time a much smaller portal would be used, but he'd open it in space. After all, it'd only take a second to get there. And he was going, he had to make sure.

[angrydurf]

The screech of the malfunctioning Black Hole Projector reached a fever pitch as Dark Star opened the portal. The vacume of deep space quickly siphoning the air from the room then the entire compound. Just as the device crossed the horizn of the portal it imploded in upon itself, an unstable black hole springing into existance just where the portal opened. The intense gravity of the black hole left Dark Star and Phantom uneffected but the base collapsed around them in the seconds it took Dark Star to close the portal.

To those out side the view was far more grim. Threre was a sudden howling wind rushing in every door of the facility and then in the blink of an eye the entire building crumbled collapsing inward in eerie silence leaveing an odd perfectly flat expanse of exposed earth where the building once stood, with the shadowy forms of Phantom and Dark Star hovering above.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Good, good." Still not wearing his mask, Jack hadn't looked bothered by the sudden near-disaster he'd caused. His attention was all directed inward, focusing on the torment that he know knew had been entirely psychological. "You did it!" he called up to Dark Star and Phantom, showing an unaccustomed joy in the moment. "Thank God, thank God." He took the opportunity to make sure that the mad scientist who'd done all this was out like a light.

[Cyroa]

Dark Star nodded to himself. "We were lucky. That was rather close." He floated down to the others, gesturing, letting the concealment field cover them. Jack still had an identity to protect. "I'll pop over to that section of space later on to verify it. It should be gone, but if a new permenant wormhole has been formed, I should at least warn the local star faring races so they aren't caught unawares."

He looked around at his friends and his girlfriend. "Is everyone alright? I am certainly glad you two showed. This madman set us up quite well. Using a friend for bait. I knew it was a trap but there were no options. If you two hadn't come to our rescue, I fear what could have happened." He didn't say anything about Jack's twisted dream-visions. They were not his to share. The man deserved time to process and heal.

[alderwitch]

It was nice when deathtraps took care of themselves neatly, without managing to hurt anyone. Of course, it usually took a great deal of help. Phantom glided out of the empty space that the building had occupied and down to Jack and Stesha in Dark Star's much faster wake. She took in Jack's expression and distinctive lack of mask, with a worried expression not entirely concealed by her shadowed hood.

"Those of us not wanting to chat with the police should probably leave. Jack, shall I take you home?" She asked quietly before glancing over to Stesha and Dark Star. "I imagine that Dark Star will want a few words with them. Stesha - Fluer - do you want to stay with him and help with the statements"

[Electra]

Stesha stepped close to Dark Star, checking him over as though there would be any damage possible to make out in that shape of blackness. "I'd better stay," she said, "I have about half a dozen goons who need to be spat out into a cell. I'm just glad that guy showed up to tell us that Jack was gone, or we might not have found you for hours more. Are you all right now?" she asked Dark Star. She would've asked Jack as well, but she was a little too annoyed about the disaster he'd almost caused to be overly concerned. With a wave of her hand, she opened up a gigantic tulip cup next to Jack. "Put the guy in there, we'll give him to the police." She still looked a little pale after the whole experience, but was feeling quite a bit better now that it had all ended so well.

[Avenger Assembled]

Keep it together. Keep it together. Jack gently lowered the man down into the flower, trusting Stesha's power would do what it was supposed to. Don't do it now. It would be so easy... He gently settled the man down and took a step back to Phantom's side. "I would appreciate that," he said simply, blinking. "It...it sounds like I need to make some calls once I'm there." And then maybe scream for an hour. Or a day.