Firestorm

[Thevshi]

GM

 

Over to the west of where the metal barricade had once stood, Aquarius steadied himself after being knocked for a loop by Gaian Knight's attack.  The brass masked villain regarded the hero and the massive dragon nearby for a moment.  "It appears this battle no longer has a purpose.  Perhaps our path shall cross once more."

 

He waved his hands and Tiamat caught a strong whiff of magic as fog began swirling around them all, spreading out to cover the entire town.  <"It has been regrettable battling you magnificent one.">  Tiamat heard Aquarius say from inside the thick fog.  <"I would hope that next time we meet it could be under different circumstances.">

 

The voice was then lost in the fog as it continued to swirl around, and soon everyone found themselves barely able to see a foot beyond their immediate area.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh, please."

 

Frost snapped his fingers and cold snapped along with him, his body briefly a vortex of ultimate cold that sucked the heat from the surrounding air in the space of a few seconds. Before the chill could penetrate the shielded bodies of his fellow heroes, the icy chill faded as a brief snowfall fell on the landscape. The fog was gone; the brief flurry over before it began, but evidently it had been time enough for their opponents to escape. Frost looked around peevishly and stared up at the sky, his red eyes following the trails of heat their departed foes had left as they departed upwards. "They have taken to sky, and quickly as well. Feh, Gabriel could likely catch them, but not safely fight them alone. And others left by some other means that left no trail. Plenty of coward's paths for that." 

 

He snorted. "Mangy dogs, to run and flee when they fear thrashing at our hands." He picked up a still-flaming arrow in his hand and clenched it between his fingers, burning end first, as he hit his League communicator. "Fleur de Joie," he inquired over his communicator, "has yours flown the coop as well?" It was a logical deduction for a man who knew warfare as well as Frost - Fleur de Joie, ever a loyal ally, had not been at their side as they fought the Zodiac, so she must have faced an enemy of her own!

[Fox]

"Yeah, we lost ours," Gaian Knight admitted, sweeping in on his platform; Tiamat wasn't far behind, looking...vexed. "The teleporter vanished a little bit ago; Aquarius disappeared into his own fog. Got some good hits in, but couldn't quite bring one down before they skedaddled."

"They were varied and coordinated," Tiamat mused, idly digging at the road with a claw. "The rout was good, but they're too unified to stay gone for long. That many people of such a spread of abilities does not come together for one failed job."

Gaian Knight grimaced. "Yeah...yeah. Probably. We won't be caught off-guard next time, though; theme-wise they're missing a few people, but now we know what a lot of them do and how they work. They get a second chance at some point, but the playing field'll be more even. In the meantime, the town could probably use a little help," he added, a little more brightly. Think we saw an ice blockade still up while we were in the air. Tiamat and I can take that one if we want to spread out and clean up a little - find the remaining folks, get these people back in order before the civilian aid gets here."

Tiamat moved to lift off, but paused, casting an eye down on Frost. "....I will deal with the ice barrier myself so long as the thermovore does not claim to help. Your talents, surely, are best used elsewhere."

[Electra]

"They broke off when I teleported the soldier with the projector away," Fleur reported to Frost over the comm from her seat in the tree. The rain was finally tapering off, but she was still soaked to the skin even through the protection of her cowl. She shoved aside a wet daisy plastered against her forehead and teleported back to the church. "Good news, everyone," she called, trying to sound legitimately cheerful about it. "The bad guys ran off when we confronted them, so now it's a matter of us chasing them down instead of them hanging around the town. I think there's some property damage, maybe a few more injured people, but it's all over now, even the rain." 

 

With those messages delivered, she lifted her comm once more and called Headquarters. "This is Fleur de Joie, I just teleported a soldier to you with a piece of technology that some very bad people want to get hold of very badly. He should be right outside the front door, if you can make sure he stays safe till we can make arrangements to have him collected." 

[Thevshi]

GM

When Fleur teleported back to the church, immediately starting off with trying to be as cheerful as possible, her words suddenly came to a halt as she found Staff Sergeant Reynolds, Specialist Jones and the priest all lying on the floor in the room where she had found the priest trying to treat Reynolds' wounds. Quickly looking over the three men, Fleur did not find any lacerations, burns or any other sign of physical injury to them. Their breathing was steady and even, but it was not at all clear how they had been rendered unconscious. There were a number of muddy foot prints in the room, but it was difficult to tell if they were from the same person or a number of people.

When Fleur called in to Freedom Hall, Bowman responded back. "Thanks Fleur, I found the Sergeant. Seems the only way he could think to try to conceal the device he was trying to get away from those bad guys that were after it was to put it on. Now…well, he has already accidently blasted apart a bench in the garden with an electrical blast, but for the moment seems to be keeping that under control."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel frowned in the direction their foes had fled, having landed on the ground finally, and leaning a bit against his spear.

 

"They fought pretty well together. What worries me is that I've not heard of any of these folks before. They didn't seem inexperienced, though. So were they trained? Have they recently changed names and costumes? Either way, who organized this group? There are enough questions I'm not really pleased we got so few answers."

 

He sighed and rolled his shoulders, his spear disappearing for the moment.

 

"I'll do a bit of aerial scouting. If people need help coordinating, give me a ring on the earpiece."

 

With that, he was a silver-and-white streak in the sky, quickly beginning a thorough circuit of the area immediately around, and then within, the town. 

[Thevshi]

Velocity had run down several of the other streets out of town a couple of miles and then double back before checking the next, but whichever direction Aries had left in, he had gone much further, so with only a one in four chance of guessing the right direction, the speedster headed back to the town to help with any wrap up.

 

"Well, Aries introduced himself and the others as the Zodiac, which means there could be as many as twelve of them."  She responded to the comments several of the others were making over the communicators.  "But there certainly seemed to be some tension between Aries and the cat guy that Fleur and I also encountered, Leo I guess."

[Electra]

Fleur blew out a breath at Bowman's report. "Well, that could be worse, I suppose. If you can put him in touch with his superiors, I imagine they'll want to come and collect him and the device as soon as possible. Keep an eye out, though, there may still be villains after him. We chased off the group that took out the convoy, but they ran away instead of engaging and we didn't have a chance to catch them. I imagine we'll be coming back pretty soon." 

 

Kneeling beside the fallen priest, Fleur cupped a seed in her palm and grew it into a particularly pungent flower. Waving it under his nose, she asked "Father, can you hear me? Do you know what happened here?" 

[Thevshi]

GM

 

The priest slowly awoke as Fleur attended him, starting slightly as he became more fully aware and then relaxing when he recognized Fleur.  He sat upright, one hand coming up to rub his forehead as he answered.  "Shortly after you left, two men arrived here, demanding the briefcase. When the soldiers refused and prepared to use their weapons, the two men....well, I am not sure what they did, but they projected some sort of blue energy at both soldiers, knocking them unconscious.  Then one did the same to me, it felt like my mind was on fire and everything went black."

 

Glancing at Staff Sergeant Reynolds, Fleur could see the briefcase was still attached to his wrist, but it was set upright and open.

 

"They were wearing identical dark blue costumes that completely covered them head to foot.  Each also had a golden symbol of their chests.  I believe it was the zodiac symbol for Gemini."   

 

[Electra]

"I'm very sorry that happened to you," Fleur told him, digging into another pouch. "I wish they'd given up the briefcase, it was empty anyway... I suppose even that might not have stopped them. But the whole gang is gone now, and hopefully they won't give you any more trouble." She pulled a few dried leaf sprigs from the pouch and handed them to him. ""Sniff this, it will help with the headache. I'll wake up the others." 

 

As she shifted her attention to the soldiers, Fleur opened her communicator. "So I saw two bad guys in town, and just got a report of two more at the church while we were fighting... how many of these guys _are_ there? I've never even heard of them before, we've got to get some more information ASAP." 

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel had taken a few minutes, to be thorough, but he didn't feel that shocked when he came up empty-handed on his search. Instead, he opted for landing at the church as Fleur was giving aid to the victims there. He landed just as she was asking about how many there were.

 

"Velocity's right. Based on their group name, there could be...well, I guess thirteen, since Gemini is apparently two people. So we've got a force whose potency in combat is at least roughly equal to ours. Or...really, equal to the Freedom League. And they're smart enough to not fight it out if it's not in their favor."

 

His frown wasn't visible to everyone on the commlink, so he continued.

 

"I can try casting some nets out when we get back to Freedom City. Make some calls. See if anyone's heard of them. But I certainly haven't. Then again, it feels like we're in an arms race these days. Lots of shifting power blocs, too. I don't like it."

Edited October 13, 2014 by KnightDisciple

[Thevshi]

GM

 

Fleur was able to easily revive the two unconscious soldiers, who had little to add to the priest's description of the two attackers.  Gabriel arrived at the church not long after the second soldier was revived, and Gaian Knight and Tiamat were soon followed, having dealt with the two ice barricades to the east and west of town.  On the way back from dealing with the west barricade, the pair stopped off in the used car lot where the third soldier who had taken refuge in Fairview had hidden himself. 

 

After they convinced Specialist Parker they were the good guys, Gaian Knight transported him back to the church where the others were waiting.  Comrade Frost and Velocity had arrived at the church as well, neither having found any sign of the villains.  Though Bowman, the team received word from Major Ellis that the Army's response team was at the original ambush sight and had secured the area, with additional personnel on their way to pick up the three soldiers in Fairview and Sergeant Davenport back at Freedom Hall.

 

While the League members had managed to keep the battery and energy projector out of the Zodiac's hands (along with the flashdrive on the testing data), the villains appeared to have been able to make off with the serum and the flashdrive associated with it, which they had managed to get a hold of during the initial ambush.