Cold Front (IC)

[Raveled]

December 20, 2011

2:45 PM

Jessica Parker's sedan moved smoothly through the streets of Parkside. The wrapped package glittered brightly from the passenger seat, and she sung along with the Christmas carols on the radio waves -- well, spoke the lyrics with a rhythm, anyway. She knew better to try and sing. "Oh the weather outside, is frightful. But the fire, is so, delightful. So since we've no place, to go. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"

In point of fact, the only snow outside was in polystyrene piles in Christmas displays in the store windows. Freedom City had seen some scattered snowfall, but nothing that had stuck around for more than twenty four hours. The weathermen kept promising a big snow in time for the big day, but it had yet to materialize.

Of course, meteorology was about the farthest thing from Jessica's mind as she pulled up to the curb. She double-checked the address and climbed out the car, shivering as she transitioned from the climate-controlled car to the blow-freezing wind of the street. She hurried around to the passenger side to collect the present, while at the same time her mind quested up and out. She found a particular cellular phone and sent a text message to it -- Mara, it's Jessica, down on the street. Buzz me in, okay?

[Fox]

Mara blinked, snapped out of the train of thought that was still only half-copied over to the large whiteboard that dominated one of her new apartment's walls. She made it all of halfway to the door before turning around to frown at the mess of equations and notes before she shook her head again. can work on it later

The young engineer was waiting by the door by the time Jessica had been buzzed in and taken the elevator to the top of the building. "Jessica! Hello. Can put your coat...mmh. Anywhere. I guess. Will turn up the heat - look cold."

[Raveled]

Jessica stood in the doorway for a moment, holding a brightly wrapped package wider than she was. "Merry Christmas, Mara! Oh goodness, yes, heat please. I don't care if there's no snow on the ground, it's far too cold outside." After glancing around a moment she set her package on a handy side table and undid the clasps on her knee-length, fur-trimmed coat. Underneath she was wearing tan slacks that went well with the coat; a thick green sweater; and the edges of a rich red blouse that peeked out around the edges of the sweater.

She glanced around the entryway and opened her mouth to compliment it -- then blinked and gave Mara a hard look. "Wait a second. You just used a first-person noun. Who are you and what did you do with Mara?" The last line was delivered half-jokingly -- but only half, given the city.

[Fox]

"Caught me," Mara deadpanned, little lights dancing behind her eyes. Fans could be faintly heard as warm air began coming into the room through vents scattered here and there on the walls. Not that the apartment had been terribly cold to begin with - she was barefoot, in old jeans and a worn black t-shirt, after all - but she figured the gesture might be nice for someone who'd just been outside.

"Am actually a dark thing from between places. First in an army to destroy your cold, snow-less world, devouring citizens, taking their shapes." The effect of her straight face and flat voice were ruined somewhat by the 'spooky' finger-wriggling motion she was doing as she explained her terrible origins. "Started with the smartest. Of course."

[Raveled]

"And the sweetest, obviously," Jessica retorted. She walked into the apartment, looking are carefully. "Very nice place you have for yourself, Mara. I take it living in an actual, intended domicile rather than a repurposed warehouse agrees... with..." She stumbled to a halt in the sitting area as her eyes finally came to rest on the long, involved equation covering one entire wall. Her eyes dilated as she took it in and for a moment her mind disengaged from the conversation entirely, rising to the exalted realms of pure math. Then she was back and she purposefully turned away from the board and faced Mara. This was a social visit, dammit, there'd be time for physics later! "So! How do you like being the boss of your own company?"

[Fox]

"Not as bad as I thought it'd be," Mara admitted, idly fiddling with the marker and trying to be less self-conscious about her apartment. at least I keep it mostly sort of uncluttered for Ellie's visits "Stressful, sometimes. But mostly okay. Stable income is nice. Haven't decided whether I like or dislike ordering people around. Phrase...'mixed bag'?"

She shrugged, pulling some hair back behind her ear. "Get to pick the most interesting problems for myself, at least. That's fun. Sometimes more of a challenge to be given something you've never worked on. Isn't bending space, but...different, at least."

[Raveled]

Jessica set the wrapped present on the floor and settled back against the couch. She sometimes forgot just how hard it was to carry something big without her armor. For a moment she worried that it might be too heavy for the smaller woman, but she dismissed the thought with a mental wave. Mara was smarter than even Jessica herself. she'd be able to deal with such a minor issue.

"Getting an unexpected problem can be fun," she agreed, nodding slowly. "Sounds like a lot of demands on your time, though. This job, the Lab, patroling, having a girlfriend. Are you, ah, taking care of yourself?" The image of Mara's malformed brain, meticulously reconstructed from Finagle knew how many scans, fleshed through her mind's eye and Jessica squirmed uncomfortably. Part of her wondered if it was proper for her to butt into Mara's life like this, but dammit this was her best friend! And Mara was a big girl, if she didn't want to answer the question she wouldn't.

[Fox]

Mara made the face she usually made when someone asked that question - the 'why do people always ask that, I'm not that bad am I?' face - and re-pulled the hair back behind her ear, as it had almost immediately escaped. "Am taking care of myself, yes. Eating. Sleeping - mostly. Training, even - when we have time. Probably better shape than I've been in for...mmh. Ever. Also, less headaches."

She shrugged, leaning back against a chair. "Usually...worn out. But happy enough. And nice thing about being the boss is I can make other people do work I don't want to do. Most of my time is spent on...business. Boring. But made sure to set it up electronically - must faster to do it with my brain than my hands."

[Raveled]

Jessica nodded. "Yeah, the administrative stuff is boring. But the benefit of doing boring work at the beginning is that you avoid the bad kind of excitement later on. 'Measure twice, cut once,' as they say." Her eyes glanced around the room, pointedly avoiding the whiteboard with its meandering calculations, and the silence began to stretch between the two women. Privately Jessica cursed herself, but she just wasn't used to making small talk. Even with Mara, she just didn't know what topics to broach.

Her eyes alighted on a window that she could see from her position and she noticed the snow sleeting past it, heavy flakes coming down at speed. "Wow, it really started snowing fast," she observed. "The streets were dry when I drove over."

[Fox]

"Mmh." Mara followed her gaze out the window, tilting her head at the falling, frozen precipitation. postpone tomorrow's raid - likely to have found the hole in the roof now - replan - underground access may still be good - would disturb snow? - may have to wait for melt - won't be able to sell before then anyway "Inconvenient, sometimes," she said, frowning. "And hard to drive on. Only two wheels, no roof. But fun to fly in, keeps crime down. Excuse to stay home from work if it piles up enough. So not so bad."

[Raveled]

"From what you told me telecommuting doesn't mean much for you," Jessica pointed out, still watching the snow. "Either your body's laying in a comfy bed, or it's reclining in a top-of-the-line office chair. Though I suppose if you put a futon in your office it would mean --"

"ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF FREEDOM CITY!!" The voice boomed over the air waves and Jessica cringed as it invaded her headspace. Simultaneously, the television in the corner turned itself on and began broadcasting. It showed an image of a snow-covered hill and a wall of blowing snow, then a head poked on screen. It was skeletal, blue, and slightly translucent, covered in sharp spikes; it looked like like someone had carved a skull out of ice and given it an anime haircut. Its mouth opened, revealing row after row of sharp, shark-like teeth. "I am the Glacier King, and I have chosen your planet as my new throne. There is no chance of resistance. By this time tomorrow, this city will be buried in snow, and then the world!" The ice-creature tossed its head back and cackled madly as the image faded.

[Fox]

It was probably more telling of the city than the citizens that Mara gave the television the sort of grumpy eye one would give a news report about an incoming blizzard. "....guess snow only helps for crime that isn't causing snow. Interesting, though. Word choice - 'planet'. Alien? Made of ice? Unusual. Seems unlikely to support living biology."

She looked back out the window, mulling something over, and then sighed. "Guess we should do something about this," she said. "Rooftop access from the hall. Won't be seen leaving by nearby buildings if we go straight up before heading out."

[Raveled]

Jessica pressed a finger between her eyebrows, her eyes squeezed shut. "Straight up. Fight bad guy. Save the day. Yeah, alright, that works. Just let me get some aspirin first, that broadcast gave me a headache."

A few minutes later, medication ingested and armor on, Ironclad shouldered open the building's roof-access door. The first blast of howling, bitter cold air pushed her off-balance and almost spilled her back inside, but a quick burp of thrusters stabilized her and she headed out into the storm. Outside it was already whiteout conditions; the apartments on either side were vague blurs and the road below was already invisible to the naked eye. Ironclad frowned as she looked around, and tasted the radio chatter. As the pair of battlesuited heroines rose into the sky, staying quite close so as not to lose sight of each other, she linked with her friend's suit. "The storm came over Bayview first," she said. "Chances are, Jack Frost is somewhere south of the river."

[Fox]

[bg=#555555]"Makes sense,"[/bg] Mara - Dragonfly - sent back, taking a moment to adjust to the shifting storm before streaking off after Ironclad, light from her four, blade-like wings coloring the falling snow. shouldn't have bothered worrying about being seen - storm's worse than I thought - no visibility? - cuts both ways - should use infravision where possible [bg=#555555]"Quiet, less populated, further from response centers. Harder to pull this off in downtown. Not that it stops some villains. What do you think: hidden base, or obvious, stupid snow machine?"[/bg]

[Raveled]

"Whatever he is, this guy made a television broadcast across the entire city," Ironclad reminded Dragonfly. "I don't think he's the sort to hide his light under bushel -- city obscuring blizzard notwithstanding." The pair flew south, separating as widely as they dared given the conditions in the air. Ironclad worried about the consequences of a sudden snow storm shutting down Freedom City for any length of time. Hopefully, anyone caught out on the street would be able to get inside, at least until the heroes could stop this villain, but what about commercial flights in the air? News and police helicopters, airliners... Two suits of powered armor were barely able to remain aloft, how could a jumbo jet? Hopefully there wasn't anyone in flight just now, or if they were other heroes could save them. Ironclad and Dragonfly had to stop whoever was causing this, before the entire city froze!

The heroes flew south, exchanging terse observations. Ironclad's sensors probed forward and found an odd cavity in the storm. She directed herself and Dragonfly towards it, and suddenly were out of the storm. Like stepping from one room of a house to the next; Ironclad could see, in her 360 degree field of view, the blowing snow making a solid wall behind her, but in this area was clear as, well, as the air had been twenty minutes ago! It only took her a moment to figure out where they were -- hovering over Lake MacKenzie in Port Regal. The lake's waterline looked incredibly low, even for winter; well, the moisture of all that snow had to come from somewhere, right?

Standing at the much-reduced shoreline was the craggy-headed figure from the television, hands sunk deep into the lake. His height was hard to estimate from that position but he looked to be no taller than Ironclad, clad in an outfit of shaggy white and brown furs, like a Nineteenth Century Arctic explorer. He straightened up as the heroines descended on him, sticking his hands on his hips. "Sorry to interrupt your work," Ironclad said as she primed her weapons systems, "but I'm afraid your license for a white Christmas has been revoked."

The self-proclaimed Glacier King laughed harshly at the heroes. "Earth's champions! I heard much of the amazing individuals who protected this world. Come then, warriors, and prove that you can handle the challenge! Defeat me -- and my army!" He gestured broadly and the mounds of snow scattered along the expanded beach, levered themselves upwards, and started walking towards the heroes. Each one looked like a pile of snow, a rough and hastily-formed snowman, towering a good three or four feet over the heroines. Well, at least it wouldn't be a dull fight.

[Raveled]

GM

The Glacier King wasted no time in responding to the presence of the heroes. He brought his massive hands together and inhaled deeply, fur-clad chest expanding to ridiculous proportions. Then he exhaled and bitterly cold air washed off the heroines. Ironclad tried to fire her thrusters, but the cold got into them and they seized; since she wasn't going to be leaving the cone of attack she leaned into the wind and kicked her suit's heaters up another notch. The young genius goggled at the temperature plummeted under the wintery assault. -40, -50, -60 degrees Celsius and falling! This man wasn't a glacier, he was a one-man Ice Age!

[Fox]

Dragonfly had to note that that was one of the few practical reasons she hadn't really gone for the thruster flight design pattern, as she watched her friend's malfunction. She had every measure of faith in Ironclad's suit's ability to weather the...well, the weather, but that didn't mean she couldn't spare some satisfaction in knowing that it was going to take more than a little ice to stop her wings.

And true to form, where her friend's design endured her design avoided: the frigid breath never even touched her, spraying outward where it hit the shield she called up at her fingertips like a hose directed at a rounded rock.

[bg=#555555]"Snowmen. Of course it would be snowmen. Giant ones."[/bg] As soon as the breath died down Dragonfly spread her hands out in front of herself, calculating the closest-grouped bunch of possible targets and marking them on her visor. The four lucky winners got the undeserving privilege of one of the long, lance-like distortions that the armored heroine launched from her gauntlets, each arcing through the air in a way that would have been quite pretty if it wasn't so unnatural and downright hungry-looking. [bg=#555555]"Just makes for big targets."[/bg]

[Raveled]

Dragonfly's dimensional distortions ripped through the living snowbanks, causing most of their number to crumble to the ground. A couple managed to lumber past the outer edges of Dragonfly's attack though, and raised their trunk-like arms in her direction. Without warning a flood of snowballs started flying through the air at her, dozens every second! She dodged and deflected as best she could, but even a teleporting genius can't be everywhere and a few snuck through her defenses, smacking against her armor far more solidly than packed snow should have been able to.

While her friend was dealing the approaching soldiers, Ironclad faced off against the self-proclaim King. "You know," she said, plodding forward and taking a few light swings, "the snow really isn't all the bad. We could use it for Christmas. You just need to schedule it a bit better and -- whoops!" Ironclad had planned to follow a quick punch through with a burst of her thrusters, to lend extra mass and speed and force to her blow, but they were still messed up from the cold and she was caught on her off-foot. Her blow went wide, the Glacier King barely having to move to avoid it.

He laughed at the heroine's attempts to land a punch on him. "If this is the best your planet has to offer, then I won't have to wait a whole day after conquering this city!" He summoned a long icicle with a wicked point from thin air and threw it at Ironclad. The ice-spear hit her -- and shattered into a billion shards on her armor, littering the ground with glittering flakes. That put the Glacier King back and he simply stared for a moment.

[Fox]

The onslaught of snowballs may have made it through her shield - no small feat, for overgrown snowmen - but by that time her defenses had taken all the bite out of the frigid projectiles and they piff'd harmlessly against her armor.

Her return fire was somewhat less harmless, a distortion chewing its way through one of the few remaining ambulatory snow piles. hah [bg=#555555]"Wouldn't make plans just yet,"[/bg] she dryly noted, lifting a little higher into the air to make sure she wasn't in anyone's immediate reach, if they decided to try to reach her. [bg=#555555]"Technically not the best in the city, and still can't stop us. Bodes poorly for you."[/bg]

[Raveled]

Ironclad reeled back from the Glacier King's attack as Dragonfly's distortions caused the last of his minions to crumble back into powder. She gained some distance and turned, leveling both her wrist blasters at him. "On the plus side," she noted, "Blackstone can finally have that ice rink the guards have been wanting!" The thunderous crack of twin particle beams discharging rolled around the drained lake-bed... but when the glare cleared, both heroines could see their icy foe still standing, albeit with a fine web of cracks over his skin.

He threw his head back and howled into the storm. "Infuriating little gnats," he bellowed. "How dare you stand in the way of my conquest!?" He reached out one hand towards Ironclad and clenched it into a fist; ice precipitated out of the air and formed around her limbs, the cold causing her motor to seize once more and dropping her out of the sky. She landed and stayed in one place, apparently paralyzed. The King turned to Dragonfly, flexing his hands. "Now to take care of this last little annoyance," he growled.

[Fox]

Dragonfly swore, though she had the good sense to cut her suit's audio first; she wasn't about to let the villain see her sweat. not good - have to believe Ironclad can free herself - distract - buy time? [bg=#555555]"Take offense to that,"[/bg] she replied, gliding through the air to draw the frigid felon's attention away from her friend. phrase - 'follow the birdie'? [bg=#555555]"Not that small. Also not technically standing in the way of anything."[/bg]

She held her arms out, sending a few twisting spatial shockwaves at the Glacier King. [bg=#555555]"Flying, not walking. Poor word choice on your part. Should try harder."[/bg]

[Raveled]

Dragonfly's warped blast threaded through the air and sliced at the Glacier King's arm. In fact, she sliced a chunk of ice off his arm, revealing a thin, pale arm! He clutched at the exposed skin, hissing at the flitting-about heroine. "When I rule this land, no one will ever know you ever existed!"

"Yak, yak, yak," Ironclad called out from her position semi-frozen to the ground. She switched her weapon system over to a non-damaging option. If she could get him to stand still, maybe Dragonfly could get a bigger hit in and knock him out, ending this impromptu blizzard. "You should learn to shut your mouth, you know?" She fired off a pencil-sized capsule at the villain; inches away from his skin the radar trigger went off and it exploded into a mass of quick-drying foam.

He was too nimble for it, though, leaping out of the way and coming down rolling. "Insolent pups," he spat. "I was once worshiped as a god! How dare you stand against me!" He summoned another icicle from the air and threw it at Ironclad. It struck square in her chest and knocked her down, and for a moment it looked like the cold javelin had pierced the heroine through her heart!

After a moment though she got up, casually shattering the shard of ice that got stuck in the front plate of her armor. "Gonna take more than that to finish off this Iron Lady, you second-rate god."

[Fox]

[bg=#555555]"Growing increasingly convinced that being worshiped as a god isn't that hard,"[/bg] Dragonfly mused, swooping in on the Glacier King and his newly-exposed skin. [bg=#555555]"Find stupid people. Wave your arms a lot. Instant deification."[/bg]

The plates on her right gauntlet flexed apart as her hand touched flesh, and something deep in the inner workings of her armor clicked. Electricity arced between her fingers as it fled from high-energy capacitors into the significantly more grounded villain. [bg=#555555]"Points for being stubborn, though."[/bg]

[Raveled]

Dragonfly seemed to have the villain well in hand, so Ironclad turned an eye to her bindings. They looked to be simply ice, but seemed far too strong for that; not that physics always made sense around metahumans, anyway. She discarded the idea of simply trying to burn it away, mostly because her thrusters were still having trouble firing. Instead she channeled the energy into the servo motors and flexed, trying to contract her body into a ball. If she could shatter the ice that had invaded the suit's joints, she be warming up many smaller shards, instead of trying to inject heat into a single mass, and that would go a lot faster.

The lightning crawled across Glacier King's skin, leaving him unaffected as it ground out against the earth. "You know nothing of my divinity," he growled, swiping ineffectually at Dragonfly as she spun through the air. "But you'll learn, you impudent pixie. As soon as you bow to me!" He superchilled the air around Dragonfly, trying to trap her in the same bonds that Ironclad was struggling against.

[Fox]

come on Ironclad - hurry Dragonfly pulled back as the air tried to freeze around her, swooping back to a 'safe' distance and trying to keep the villain's attention. [bg=#555555]"Know you can't be that divine,"[/bg] she countered. [bg=#555555]"Making you look bad with an armored suit I made myself. Out of scraps. And vacuum tubes."[/bg]

She launched a one-two punch of distortions his way as she backed up, the blasts cutting weird, rippling patterns into the falling snow as they went. [bg=#555555]"Granted. It's a very nice suit. But still - always room for improvement. Always improving. Wouldn't call it a divine suit."[/bg]