Logs:Operation: A.T.T.A.C.K.

Operation: A.T.T.A.C.K.
Antagonists' Teamwork Trumps Avengers' Cooperative Klutziness
Dramatis Personae Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Falcon, Hulk, Black Widow
In Absentia	2024-05-20 "You're welcome." (after a call to action, followed by alien invasion. Part of Avengers TP.)
Location Skithblathnir - Somewhere off the Atlantic Coast
Whatever Fury's Alien Protocol might have said, this ship does not look extraterrestrial at all. It's certainly very large, and probably extraordinarily expensive, but it's very much -- just a ship, though it's coasting surprisingly fast as it heads in the General Direction of the Eastern Seaboard. As might be expected of a craft this size, preliminary scans show quite a lot of people on board. Not many of them are on the deck, though; with only a half-dozen figures gathered aboveboard it looks strikingly quiet. The six on deck, though -- none of them are familiar to all the incoming team, but most of them are familiar to at least some of them. Pepper, tall and muscular in her exo-suit. Salt, rifle shouldered oddly casually. Garlic, lean and alert leaned up against the rail. Cinnamon's bulk easy to pick out -- he's already slightly glowing. The enormous Doombot Saffron standing in the center, probably not nearly as deactivated as its current stillness suggests. The last woman, short and compact, doesn't look like much of anything. The Quinjet is curving in from the south, cruising low and theoretically in stealth mode. Steve is frowning past the pilots at the deck of the massive ship. "Déjà vu," he mutters under his breath before raising his voice. "Alright, folks, we should be over the drop zone in just under a minute, so get ready." He straps on his helmet and hitches his shield firmly to his gauntlet, checking that his guns are secure in their holsters. "We're going to need a plan of attack --" The ramp of the Quinjet is already lowering as Hulk shoves Steve out of the way. "PLAN TOO SLOW," he bellows as he simply steps off the ramp, the last word dopplering away below them. Perhaps some of Bruce's copious scientific acumen has rubbed off, because the jet's velocity at the time he jumped gives him just enough momentum to land at the edge of the deck, leaving a small crater out of which he now leaps straight for the Doombot, roaring "HULK SMASH!" "We have a plan." Tony's voice comes crisp through the speakers on his suit. The iconic riff of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" begins to play a moment later, not quite drowning out his follow-up: "Attack." A crimson and gold streak blasts out of the jet, powering his way directly toward Cinnamon -- though his rapid flight path is preceded by a piercing bolt from one of his repulsors. Clint shakes his head slow. 'Goggles do not like that song,' he signs as he clips the carabiner from his rig to the rail overhead, tests the grip of the manual descender, and curls his other arm around Nat. He jumps well before he can see the edge of the deck, and they zip down so fast it looks like they're going to crash right into the side of the vessel, but the Quinjet is moving even faster and towing them with it. They whoosh over the heads of friend and foe alike, headed for the superstructure where the bridge crew is, presumably, watching all this with displeasure. Clint disconnects the line when they're over top of it, trusting Nat to stick her own landing as he drops down and rolls back to his feet, deploying his bow and firing a net arrow in the same motion, aimed at the sniper. 'With any luck, neither will these mercs.' Nat is holding on, tight, to Clint. She doesn't seem particularly alarmed by the speed at which they're making their approach, and she's letting go of Clint right about when he disconnects the line. She does stick her landing, tucking and rolling swift to hurl a slender disc across the deck towards Garlic; the disc is shooting dart-like electrodes up towards the gymnast. Sam's expression looks pretty impassive behind his red goggles, but all the same there's something about his body language that suggests he is Not Impressed at these precipitous departures. Possibly, usually, this would be when he makes Knowing Eye Contact with Steve. But instead he's just slipping past his roommate in stony silence, wings flaring wide as he drops down into the sky. He's veering towards the unfamiliar woman, though he doesn't attack -- he's got his guns drawn, for sure, aimed at her, but he's landing just by the edge of the crater Hulk smashed. "You add kidnapping to your laundry list of crimes, how y'all think this was going to end?" He's not waiting for answer, just dropping belowdecks through the Hulk-hole. Steve's mouth pulls to one side, but he otherwise accepts this entirely predictable turn of events with equanimity. He does try to make knowing eye contact with Sam, but also seems to know that's a non-starter. He lets Falcon clear the ramp before he steps out onto it, sights the distance, and just -- jumps. Was he wearing a parachute? No, and it's too low for a chute, anyway. Good thing Captain America's got a familiar face down below to break his fall, his hundred-foot dropkick aimed right at Pepper. The giant ex-Doombot should probably be evading, probably be doing anything at all with an angry Hulk roaring straight toward it. It doesn't come to motion until the very last moment, though. Its speakers crackle to life, Christina Aguilera's strong voice blaring a sharp contrast to Iron Man's power riff: "It makes me that much wiser -- So thanks for making me a fighter." Has the robot gotten stronger? Probably, last time they fought, it shouldn't have been much of a threat, as it reaches out like it's trying to bear-Hug the Hulk. But somewhere around it the gravity is shifting, strange and distorted; it takes a good chunk of the heft out of Hulk's charge and adds a whole lot into Saffron's, as the robot hurls the green man down into the hole and straight toward Falcon's back. "Respect your style, but get with the times, Arrow Guy." Salt has shouldered his rifle as Hawkeye draws. The shot he fires back doesn't have any of the report of a regular bullet, but it's definitely fired something toward that net, which is -- going up in flames, its momentum no longer enough to make its target, though the fiery netting is falling towards Steve where he is aiming at Pepper. Pepper seems to be expecting this. She hasn't quite managed to avoid Captain America's dropkick, but she's shifted her weight quite heavily so that her exoskeleton takes most of the immense force. She whirls with it, redirecting Steve in his fall -- she goes down to the deck, flinging Cap toward the middle of the fiery net. Cinnamon isn't nearly as red as his opponent, but he's working on it! The repulsor bolt catches him squarely in the chest and he slides back several feet with a heavy grunt. "Sick tune, Tin Man!" he calls out a split second before Iron Man tackles him. Before he lets Iron Man tackle him. His muscular arms wrap around the suit, the blistering heat of his body sensible even through the metal, as is his booming laughter. "Hope you like it hot!" Garlic hurls himself off the deck and flicks the batons in his hands. Crackling purple energy unspools from the end of each, the first whipping a smart circle to bat the projectile out of the air and the other snapping out to coil around his opponent's trailing foot. The smallish woman huffs a silent laugh and just -- disappears through the deck, and when she rematerializes she seems to have brought some of the deck with her. Here, out of the sun, a network of lines on her body glows green, as if she's lightly cracked. The jagged shards of steel around her are not just glowing but humming as they fly down the corridor at the intruder. "I've had hotter than you." There might be a bit of extra strain in Iron Man's voice, but past the blare of the music it gets harder to tell. His barrelling path isn't slowing down, though -- just continuing to hurtle, spicy-hot hugs and all, off the edge of the ship and -- splash! -- down into the water. There's a heavy hunff of breath from Black Widow as the whip crackles around her. She keeps her forward motion, jerking hard at the whip as it goes taut. After that sharp yank she's flipping back towards Garlic, one of her arms shifting to coil the purple strand around one of her forearm bracers as the other -- crackling with a fierce electric jolt -- slams up towards Garlic's crotch. "BAD ROBOT!" cries Hulk as he puts one gigantic fist through the bulkhead to slow himself, ripping through the heavy plating like so much aluminum foil and bleeding off just enough momentum to narrowly avoid bowling over Falcon. "HULK ANGRY!" he declares, in case anyone was in doubt. He grips a long strip of ruined bulkhead he'd just torn open and pounds his way back up toward the Bad Robot, slapping it sidelong with almost half a ton of steel. "Oh heck --" Captain America may be in a pickle, but he's watching his language as he falls into the burning net of fire. He tucks his head and just -- takes it, rolling the edge of his shield hard as he tumbles to the deck, cutting through the net. He does not stick the landing but, scorched and smoldering, he's on his feet again in a flash, squeezing off a three-shot burst from his MK-18 at Pepper. "Wo-o-oah." Falcon is pulling his wings in sharpish, also to avoid being bowled over by Hulk. "I'onno if a sensitive, close-quarters mission is really the place for --" But he doesn't really get a chance to finish criticizing the choice of Team Composition, here; he's pulling one of his wings up quick to block the shards that are flying at him and bat them hard back in the woman's direct. "Who you, then, Mustard?" He's keeping the wing-armor largely between himself and the woman, firing a quick burst from behind it even as his goggles are scanning the ship in all directions around him, trying to get a better read on the various people-signatures behind the walls and floors. Hawkeye doesn't snipe back, but then, it's entirely possible his goggles didn't pick up Salt's recommendation in all this hubbub. He's already loosed another arrow, which apparently misses Salt but starts curving back, somehow. His next shot also looks like to miss, hitting the deck several feet shy of Salt, only to crack open and spill a very compact bola at the man's ankles. Quite a lot of the staff has elected to take some kind of shelter as the fighting breaks out above. There are definitely plenty of people around -- doors firmly shut, staying well out of the fracas. There's something else, too -- a much fiercer, much brighter energy signature that reads brighter than any human coming from not far off on the floor beneath Falcon. There are people down there, too, though fewer of them; two human, one -- well, human-shaped, though he's radiating a similar, if fainter, kind of energy from the Bright Thing below. Up top, Pepper stumbles back, a quiet whirring click coming form her armor as it recalibrates. When she charges forward again the footfalls land heavy, thumping, on the deck. "Just like a relic," she's gritting between her teeth as she slams hard into Cap, aiming -- maybe oddly, in Salt's direction, "to try standing in the way of progress." Just behind them, Salt has stumbled back as the bolas clip his legs. He doesn't go down, though -- he finds himself braced against Steve's broad back. It's just enough to stabilize himself for a more intentional fall. He's taking quick aim at Hawkeye again. The bullet he shoots, this time, explodes before it gets to Hawkeye. Perhaps somewhat insultingly, it explodes into a wide and weighted net. Salt's quick to flick a button on his rifle, fire off a second round. This net, too, ignites. Saffron's music has stopped, meanwhile, as the robot skids back and crashes into the deck wall. As it straightens a new voice crackles from its speakers, now. "Anger leads to Hate, Hate... leads to suffering." But just in case this isn't exactly Hulk's language, it's trying direct communication, too: several missiles ejected and veering straight for Hulk. Garlic goes with the initial jerk on his whip, but when Black Widow wraps it around her arm it evaporates. He executes a neat backflip, boosted by the force released by the broken leverage and flings the baton -- crackling with purple whatever-that-is -- at Black Widow. "You Americans talk too much," says the faintly glowing woman with a not-so-faint Russian accent as she sidesteps Falcon's barrages, deflected and otherwise. The problem is, she sidestepped right through the outer hull, vanishing from sight and sensor alike. In her place, a torrent of water, also glowing faintly green, gushes down the passageway toward Falcon. The cold Atlantic water flash-boils around Cinnamon and Iron Man, roiling hard and sending up an alarmingly thick plume of steam. The water doesn't seem to quench whatever is heating Cinnamon from inside, but it is bleeding off the heat too fast for him to melt his opponent, at least. It doesn't stop him squeezing tighter, though presumably at some point, he will in fact need to breathe again. Conveniently, there's a sudden uncanny pocket of air below them, which doesn't actually help Cinnamon breathe but does heave them violently back up to the surface. Captain America braces for Pepper's slam with his shield, but at the last minute steps back in a bid to overbalace her -- or at least dull the force of her impact. In service of the former he's flipped his weapon to full auto and fires down at the deck plating under Pepper's leading foot. The the flare of Salt's net bursting into flames catches his eye and he takes another step back, but quarter-turning this time out of Pepper's way -- though not fully out of her reach in this high-powered dance of theirs -- to fling his shield and intercept the flaming net before it can reach Clint up on his perch. Hulk is still having fun with his new toy weapon, reversing it now to try to scoop-scrape-push Saffron off the deck and into the water. He roars as the missiles hit him one after the next, but keeps moving forward. The last two have to curve around sharper to stay on target and so hit him from behind, knocking him down finally. He rises, dusty with explosive residue and the detritus of ordinance and ruined deck alike. "WRONG! ATTACHMENT IS THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING!" He swings strip of bulkhead like a big, springy bat aimed at detaching Saffron from the ship. The hum that begins in Iron Man's chest is, under the water, weirdly both muted and amplified, less heard and more felt in the growing vibrations in the water. It gets louder all at once with the sudden eruption out of the water, and then the unibeam in its sudden devastating power is erupting straight at Cinnamon's chest to lever them violently apart. Iron Man is shooting back toward the ship, skidding hard across the deck when he lands. When he halts himself near Nat and Garlic he's batting the baton out of its current trajectory, sending the crackling purple energy more towards the deck at Black Widow's feet than towards the woman herself. "You're welcome," is directed at his nominal teammate as the baton clatters down. Black Widow has already been correcting her own trajectory, a quick duck and quick twist that -- well, it would have gotten her out of the way of the baton, but the baton is not where she expected any longer and so she's simply snatching at Nothing in the air, the crackling energy hitting her ankle instead. She hisses as she drops to the deck, eyes narrowed hard at Iron Man, but adjusts soon enough, kicking the baton up and away from Garlic in a bid to send it overboard. When she flips herself upright she's aiming a kick at Garlic, too, hard toward his midsection in the opposite direction from the baton. Hawkeye's expression, if anyone happens to glance at him when Salt hits the second trigger, is decided one of "oh come on", but he's already nocked another arrow when Steve's shield comes out of--well, not exactly nowhere, but he clearly wasn't expecting the "save". He shifts his aim, loosing the arrow he had prepped to save himself (loaded with sticky purple putty) at Pepper, instead. "You're welcome!" he calls after it. Sam shakes his head as the woman disappears. He's giving the hallway one more quick glance as the water starts gushing, and hurls himself sideways towards a stairway door, slamming it hard behind himself. He bolts, quick, down to the level below, coming out -- not too far from where he'd sighted those Weird Energy Signatures. Salt has detangled himself from the bola. His next shot isn't quite at Hawkeye, but it slams with a shattering force into the man's bow right as he's loosing his shot. "You're welcome," he's saying a little smugly -- nominally this is probably to Pepper but he's looking up at Hawkeye. Pepper just lifts her chin in thanks to Salt like this was very expected. She's shifted out of the way as Salt shoots -- the arrow, knocked awry from its shot, is instead unleashing its load of sticky purple goop to ensnare Black Widow and Iron Man instead. She does lose her footing as Steve shoots at the deck, and is hurling herself -- towards him, knocking him back as she goes heavily to the ground. Saffron does detach from the ship, flinging hard up into the air. He doesn't get far before he's very improbably yo-yo-ing right back, slamming into Hulk with all the force Hulk just put into him. "You can shake an apple off an apple tree, shake-a, shake, sugar, but you'll never shake me," plays from the robot as they skid together -- RIGHT at Steve and then through the hole already in the deck, CRASHING heavily through the next floor as well in a heap of Green Monster and Enormous Robot and rubble that clatters down just in front of Sam as he emerges in the stairwell. The floor they are all on now is considerably less populated than the ones above and below -- most of one side is taken up by a large and extremely complex looking machine that houses a brightly glowing cube in its Center. Just opposite the machine is a comfortable-looking room -- Fury is in it, and Lucien, and another man, huge and strapping and blonde and looking like he just stepped out of the pages of a fantasy novel with his ornate armor and flowing cape. The secondary Weird Energy Signature Sam has clocked is coming from this person. Beside the machine, a wide-eyed and weedy looking man has been tracking the many (many) sensors and signatures the machine is displaying. This man does not look much like he wants to fight the people who have just arrived, paling and backing himself away from them all hastily, but he looks -- equally as frightened, really, when he looks to the machine, as he does when he looks at the attackers. He's slamming a button nearby the console. There's a sudden alarm blaring, together with ominous red flashing lights. If Sam is attending, all around the ship a lot of the crew is very hastily scrambling to evacuate. "You all are making a big mistake," he's saying, kind of urgently, to the intruders. Garlic braces with a forearm that definitely feels armored underneath, but his opponent's kick lands stronger perhaps than he expected and he again backflips away instead of falling. Mid-flip he flicks his remaining baton, which shoots out a crackling line of purple energy that Ironic Man could have dodged if his armored boots weren't suddenly glued to the deck. He uses the momentum he got from Black Widow and Iron Man for a pivot to swing himself around and scoop up his other baton just before it rolls off the edge of the deck, and with it he lassos Cinnamon to save him another swim. This spends the rest of his momentum, but he cartwheels just a bit further, enough to wrap the energy whip still anchored to Iron Man around Black Widow, as well. The whip contracts, yanking his two opponents together in a crackling embrace made all the more awkward by feet stuck in place. "You should get to know each other better, mes chers!" Cinnamon, newly rescued and sans target, both courtesy of Garlic's assist, lines up a charge toward the superstructure, despite his own team leader standing squarely in his path and despite the giant hole in the deck just beyond her. "Gimma boost, Sarge!" Maybe the request isn't really necessary, because Pepper is already bracing her armored suit and stooping low, cupping her gauntleted hands, letting Cinnamon's leading foot push off and then heaving his trailing foot with a mighty cry that sends her teammate, as big as he is, catapulting directly at Hawkeye. "Fireballllll!" The small Russian woman appears through the bulkhead opposite Falcon, again with chucks of it in tow that she hurls at him, but then she's hastily dropping through the floor with a sharp "suka blyat!" to avoid a piece of the overhead as it caves in. The technician who had hit the alarm transfers his wide-eyed staring from Falcon to the heap of Large Muscular Men (plus Doombot). "Please!" his voice wavers with terror. "If you shut it down -- the alien in there is incredibly dangerous!" He points in the direction of the prison cell with one violently shaking hand. "You can't let him get loose!" "My Widow --" Iron Man is starting to say. He doesn't finish the thought when he's very abruptly quite attached to Black Widow. He's shooting a blast quick, down at the glue at their feet, but aside from shuddering the deck heavily this does very little for their current predicament. "Know this jerk as well as I want to," Black Widow is muttering, low but not so low that Iron Man can't hear it, as up close and personal as they are. She drops an arm, flicking something in her bracers -- a stream of some kind of clear ooze breaks out of one of the capsules held inside to sizzle down onto Hawkeye's adhesive. The putty melts back into ooze, and she's yanking hard away from Iron Man the moment she's able to get free. Hawkeye is mid-draw when Salt's shot unerringly snaps the lower limb of his bow, spraying cams and ribs and, worst of all, the high-tensile strength string with the lower limb still attached. "Suka blyat!" he also blurts, though he certainly couldn't hear Sage even if she were there and not several decks away. This last comes whipping around as he turns hastily away, but it still deals him a glancing blow to the side of his head, smashing his goggles, luckily, and not his left eye. It's probably also luck that he crumples just before Cinnamon reaches him, letting the hotshot's trajectory carry him over the superstructure...and into the ocean. Again. Hulk's roar stutters with each deck they crash through, and it's hard to tell whether he deliberately turns to avoid utterly flatting Cap when they finally land. He certainly doesn't seem to be paying Cap any mind after that, busy holding the Doombot down. "TONY MUSIC BETTER!" is somehow the complaint he makes here, despite also being shot from behind by the last unnamed woman of the opposing team. Falcon is looking over to the cell where Fury et al are being held, his face turned more towards Lucien than the others. His jaw has tightened -- hard -- when Cap appears. He looks almost ready to step to the machine himself, but then holds his ground. He's shifting, a little, to put himself in between the Russian and Cap, and though his posture is tense, his voice is low and calm. "Machine's keeping that cage and all these assholes powered, Cap. Doubt these good folks tryna kill us are the most trustworthy of murderous kidnappers." Captain America might well have been properly crushed if the collapsing deck hadn't dropped his shield down with them all. With it he turns aside the force of the Doombot falling on top of him, but he's slower to resume his feet than usual and swaying when he does. He's lost his helmet somewhere in the crash and there's blood and sweat alike trickling down his face. The babbled warnings draw his attention before his eyes track aside to the cell. He goes up to the machine, eyes ticking over it without comprehension, brows furrowing deep as he looks back to the man who's cowering, ready to bolt. "Signal said hostile extraterrestrial." His lips press thin, but finally it's Sam he looks at, with a very small nod, before lifting his shield and bringing its edge down hard, cleaving through the machinery. The sudden crackle of energy that engulfs the machine is very bright and very dramatic. The ship goes dark, abruptly very quiet as its power shuts off, the ocean finally able to be heard over the alarms and noises that had drowned it out. The glowing cube within the machine is a bright source of light all to itself, casting cold blue glow around all the gathered people. Cinnamon has stopped glowing. Garlic's blue whips have died. Saffron has simply gone fully inert. Pepper's suit is not moving, a stiff trap now that she is trying to extricate herself from. Salt's complicated rifle does nothing when he pulls the trigger next. The last woman takes one panicking look at the cage and scrambles for the stairwell. The one-way screen that has kept the prisoners inside flickers and dies out with the rest of the power, freeing its captives for the first time to see the commotion outside. "My friends, I thank you for your assistance these past days. And for the boon you have brought me in ending this long captivity. I have waited far too long for this moment." It sounds quite earnest. The tall blonde is striding out of the cage. He lifts a hand -- the glowing cube flies out of its cradle and into his grip. "I only regret that your world will be ending too soon for you to enjoy your freedom, as well." Through the crater in the decks overhead, a thick cover of stormclouds can be seen rolling in to blot out what little sun shines down. When the man vanishes, the ruined ship is left in darkness again.