ic If It Bleeds, It Leads [IC]

[trollthumper]

GM

Friday, February 10th

10:52 PM

Riverside was, as usual, bustling, especially along 4th Avenue. The place where City Center met Riverside, it was where the industrial forests of downtown began to give way to the townhouses and nightclubs of the bohemian district. If you had a tendency to buy what they said in Lonely Planet, it was where the business suit was traded for evening wear. The streets were thronged tonight - the weekend had begun hours ago, the work week was well and truly dead, and many were hitting the town to celebrate.

Two individuals, however, were most definitely not there with pleasure in mind. Arrowhawk and Midnight were patrolling the neighborhood, moving through on their respective routes. As others moved through the main streets and sidewalks, they kept to the back alleys, side roads, and rooftops. They had passed through the neighborhood on the same night on many occasions, their patrol routes often keeping one from noticing the other. Who knew if they would meet tonight...

[Gizmo]

Midnight slid from shadow to shadow along the rooftops on Riverside, a vague shape of black on black that wouldn't have shown on most dedicated surveillance cameras let alone to the average naked eye. Red eyes that burned like sullen coals in a featureless mask, the only thing visible against the night, were also the best reason for anyone who did catch a glimpse to convince themselves as best they could that they hadn't.

Redbird was parked along with the Night Cycle near enough to be there when called upon, but for actual patrolling it was hard to beat actually taking the tops of the neighbourhood's buildings on foot and grappling line. Working methodically through the area, the lack of light no impairment to his mutated eyes, the silent vigilante continued on his way.

[Ecalsneerg]

But some people did have eyes keen enough to see the movement, and trained enough to know the difference between a man wearing black and a deep shadow.

Despite Arrowhawk's bulky frame, he too had been moving silently and invisibly across rooftops, the only marks of his passage a brief rush of air as his long cape stirred it up around him. He slid from rooftop to rooftop, his movement not even making a sound on rough slates or gravel, the white motif on his costume somehow not even protruding from the darkness.

"Midnight," he said in a low, rough voice, nodding as he melded out from the shadows.

[Gizmo]

"Arrowhawk," Midnight acknowledged in turn, held tilting slightly to one side in the barest of gestures. It had been more than a year since the two had crossed paths during the opportunistic prison break that had sprung up in the midst of the mot recent Grue invasion and the archer could tell with a glance that the other hero had not been idle in that time. While he had been just slightly taller than the experienced vigilante even then, Midnight had broadened noticeably, packing on lean muscle as he'd grown into a frame that had seemed a touch on the lanky side at the time.

Moreover, his posture spoke of new confidence. Not the confidence of rigorous training and extensive planning, which he'd already possessed during their previous meeting, but the self-assurance that only came from having faced the absolute worst case and come out the other side. It was a subtle thing, with the carefully unreadable stance and manner, but Arrowhawk knew better than most what to look for.

[trollthumper]

Before the conversation - or at least, the air of tension - could continue much longer, the night was split by the sound of broken glass, followed by the screaming of pedestrians. Arrowhawk and Midnight were able to trace the source immediately -- two blocks down. Indeed, as they crossed the rooftops, they could see the source of the distress. An office building, all semi-reflective windows showing off the night sky - except for one, which had been smashed out. Hanging from the window was a long length of chain, and at the bottom of it was a block-like object covered in a curtain. Clubgoers on the street below were pointing towards it, trying to figure out what was happening.

"Good evening, Freedom City!"

The attention of the passersby was quickly drawn to a parked flatbed truck, the kind that usually played host to moving billboards. In the place of a billboard was a large flat-screen TV, which had suddenly flared to life. On the screen, a young woman stood in the middle of a newsroom, clad in a professional-looking pant suit - which made the blonde mohawk and pancake makeup stand out all the more.

"This is your doyenne of destruction, Madame Marvelous! How are you all doing on this fine Friday evening?" She paused for half a second, as if waiting for the audience to answer, then plowed on ahead. "Why, you're in despair! The beauty has left your life! The humdrum, rundown modern life suffocates you, and there's no real art to be found! Well, never fear! I'm here to bring the beauty of chaos into your gray little world!" Her manic expression soured almost instantly. "And I would've done it faster, if it weren't for pond-sucking scum like this man."

The curtain fell away from the object dangling from the high-rise, revealing a diving cage -- and inside of it, a scared-looking, photogenic man in dress shirt and pants. He appeared to be cuffed to the cage bars, and, to Midnight and Arrowhawk's eyes, was wearing a suicide vest. "Paul Harrison, late -- well, not quite yet -- of Gossip Monger. Seems like no matter what I do to bring joy into the hearts of the masses, he and his colleagues ignore me in the name of the latest red carpet flasher or car crasher! Sure, that was my gig once, but there's no class in it, Paul, don't you agree?"

Paul yelled something, but the hubbub below - now swelling into chaos - was drowning it out. "Well, Paul," continued Madame Marvelous, "I think it's time we gave the people a real show. Let's see... you gave me just fifteen minutes. Only fair I should give you the same." She pressed a button in her studio, and the LED display on the paparazzo's suicide vest flared to life - 15:00, 14:59, 14:58...

"Oh. And just in case any of you overblown pigs calling yourself 'heroes' decide to get involved, I've got my eye on Paul! Any of my boys see some Boy Scout get involved, the fireworks display starts early! And if you think of cutting the red wire, well... you'll buy him maybe a few seconds."

[Ecalsneerg]

Arrowhawk whirled and crouched low, nearly disappearing into the shadows. "Great timing." He growled under his breath, making some half-hearted calculations.

"Spare me from glory hounds. We need to get him out of there, disarm the bomb, do it without setting it off, and do it without being seem until after we've stopped the blast. How much do you know about explosives?"

His red eyes glaring at Midnight from the shadows were all that could be seen of him.

[Gizmo]

"Know explosives," Midnight assured the elder hero in concise fashion. While his focus might have been on mechanical engineering, he was more than familiar enough with the construction and more importantly the disassembly of the sort of incendiary device likely wired into the vest strapped around Harrison. Flexing his gloved hands in a precise fashion extended row after row of microfilament barbs ideal for scaling the side of the office building. Even with attention on the mirrored windows, he judged that he'd be able to blend in against the reflected night sky. "You?" he added, inquiring after what Arrowhawk would be doing while he rescued with the hostage.

[Ecalsneerg]

Arrowhawk nodded at the red neon beams he could see, if only for a second. "See, those beams? I can see where they led back to. I figure they're snipers, and they're how she's going to make sure the guy dies even if we defuse the bomb. Which is both good, because it means there isn't a dead man's switch on the bomb, and bad because... well, snipers."

He took a bracing step on the edge of the building. "Good hunting," he nodded to the newest Midnight. And on that, he leapt off the rooftop, just a shadow floating unseen into the darkness. He let his course carry him towards the office building on the corner, gauging it'd be best to move from there to the two snipers across from the hostage, and then down to street level to tackle the van.

[Gizmo]

Midnight made a brief sound that could reasonably be interpreted as an affirmative before disappearing off of the opposite side of the rooftop. He'd seen the red dots himself and deduced their purpose but he was impressed that Arrowhawk had been able to judge their individual points of origin from such a passing glance. A sharpshooter's realm of expertise, he supposed as he moved stealthily through the night, choosing his route to take him to the side of the office building Harrison was suspended from. There was a balance to be struck between staying out of the spotlight until he was ready to act and not wasting the dwindling minutes Madame Marvelous had allowed her victim.

[trollthumper]

Arrowhawk was able to enter the office building without any sort of alarm. Obviously, Madame Marvelous's goons had cut whatever sort of defenses had been set up in order to get in undetected - but even if the defenses had been up, they would have been a piece of cake. He knew where the sniper would be - third floor, corner office. He crept along the hallways, his eyes turned towards the cubicles and his ears towards the office. Just because she had snipers trained on the hostage didn't necessarily mean that was all she had. If her men did have backup, though, they weren't on this floor. He found the office he was looking for, hearing the muffled chatter as Madame Marvelous's hired goon checked in with her. He just had to wait for the feed to cut off...

Midnight, meanwhile, clung to the shadows. The crowd was starting to panic by now, honestly afraid for the reporter's life. And even from this far down, over the din of the masses, Midnight could faintly hear Paul screaming for help.