Logs:Libertarian Paradise

Libertarian Paradise
Dramatis Personae Steve, Sam	2023-11-25 (Part of Avengers TP.)
Location Regret Island (south of New Zealand)
It's called 'Regret Island' -- a scenic elevated rock far to the south of the Antipodes Islands (near New Zealand). Europeans in the early 1800s approached it in search of seals, only for their ships to break and sink on the hidden jagged rocks that enclosed it. After numerous failures, they finally navigated the deadly reef -- only to find an island almost devoid of wildlife. Nowadays, it serves as the private home of one 'Peter Lawson' -- a 30-something tech-bro from Adelaide, Australia. He made his mark during the crypto-boom (slipping out prior to the crash) and has been implicated in over a dozen massive illegal financial schemes throughout Eastern Europe. This private island of his is a present from Alchemax -- he's one of their primary investors. According to intel scavenged from contractors, it includes a basement-level doomsday bunker with enough facilities to house over 50 mercenaries and about 10 members of the house-staff. From inside the Quinjet (quietly humming in stealth-mode about 5000 feet up), the house looks like a concrete brick. It's a pseudo-Brutalist style two-story facility with a massive concrete courtyard and its own private air-strip. At a glance, about 10 men are outside, each in 5 pairs -- clad in black plated body-armor. Some of them have helmets with skull-styled face-plates; others have skull decals on their arms and shoulders. They're part of a PMC outfit that works for Alchemax -- Myrmidon. They're armed with semi-automatic rifles and a few... unusual looking grenades. There's at least six (three pairs) posted at the main building -- two at the front entrance's plated glass, two more at the side kitchen entrance (where a staff member is emerging, clad in a white shirt and black vest, carrying a bag of trash out), and two more striding along the roof's perimeter -- one of them stopping to smoke a cigarette. Somewhere inside, Peter Lawson waits -- oblivious to the team sent to extract him. A winged shadow launches from the Quinjet's ramp and describes a wide, lazy spiral that tightens as it descends more sharply. If anyone in the site below happened to look up, it might be hard initially to figure out what they were looking at against the brightness of the sky -- is it some kind of weirdly shaped UAV? A guy with wings? Two guys with one pair of wings? Pretty close, actually. Steve is the less aerodynamic of this duo by far, hanging down from what looks very much like a DIY rig cut from a parachute harness, no matter what S.H.I.E.L.D. R&D calls it or how high-tech they insist it is. As they get low enough to risk someone spotting their shadow he gives Sam a thumbs up, hits the quick release on the not-a-parachute-harness, and freefalls the hundred (or so -- he was eyeballing it) feet down. Probably this would be fine for Captain America regardless, but he's being kind to his knees today and softens his landing by dropping down onto one mercenary and slamming his shield up under the chin of their buddy. With his cargo gone, Sam's movement in the air is more nimble. His flexible wings are folding inward as he tucks into a roll, barrelling down towards the side entrance and toppling one of the guards there as he goes. "Yo, hold the door --" It's a kind of superfluous request as he lands. One wing is outstretched to catch at the kitchen door, the other slamming up hard towards the second guard at the side entrance. "Stopped by for coffee, your boss in?" His eyebrows have raised to the poor kitchen staff, though his gaze have turned towards the house, red goggles already scanning the interior for heat signatures. There is a brief half-formed moment of puzzlement -- "hey, what the hell is--" -- prior to impact. The first mercenary crumples beneath the force of Captain America's landing with the sharp crackle of impact; the second is caught by the shield just as he turns, his skull face-plate fracturing beneath the blow that carries him up and into the air. He lands somewhere in the distance with a dull thud. The other two at the side-entrance scarcely get even that -- there is a flap of wings, a smack that sends the second reeling off and tumbling as the first collapses underneath the impact of Sam's weight. Two kitchen staff immediately step back from a sink counter, hands upraised; the woman on the left mutters: "Holy shit, I swear I just work here--" Apparently, some of them were expecting something like this. Sam's goggles pick up four figures in the dining room just past the kitchen door -- and what looks like two more beyond that, in a small isolated room past the dining room. One of the two isolated figures just stood up -- their heat signature is intensifying, as if something around them was heating up. Steve circles around to the kitchen entrance. "You're such a gentleman," he tells Sam with a lazy, very much not-regulation salute before darting through the door. Only now does he draw his firearm, though he points it scrupulously at the ceiling rather than the terrified staff. "Well, there's too many cooks in the kitchen anyway." He actually does wait for Sam to catch up -- he's a gentleman, too. Oh, and tell him what lies ahead, probably. "Sorry to interrupt your day, ma'am." Sam hasn't drawn his gun, not yet. He lets the door slam shut again behind Steve, and gestures ahead of them. "Four through there, two in there --" His brows have furrowed as he focuses on the isolated room beyond. "-- and one of 'em lighting up like --" His head only turns minutely, the goggles inscrutable, but the weight of his attention has shifted briefly to Steve; he shifts tack for the end of this sentence to say instead, "-- just brace for some heat." As if right on cue, two of the four men in the dining room barge in (Sam can make out the other two through the wall. One of them is looking for something; the other is just starting to stand up). The arrivals are in full uniform, masks on and rifles in hand. A large island (comprised of a few grills, ovens, microwaves -- and a massive overhead vent with dozens of ladles and other utensils dangling along its rim) sits between them and the two intruders. Well, that -- and the two staff members. Speaking of which: "--shit, get DOWN--" she bellows, slamming her coworker to the floor with her body. It's a good thing, too... because the two mercs don't waste much time: They're immediately opening fire with a short spray of lead. Fortunately, there's a good 30 feet between them and the dynamic duo -- along with a lot of dangling pots and pans -- so that initial barrage has a pretty reasonable chance of missing. Unfortunately... they're not stopping, the pair splitting up to orbit either side of the kitchen island as they let off short-bursts -- intent on flanking them. In the distance, the heat signature that's building up suddenly flares way up -- in direct response to gunfire. Steve raises his shield and steps in front of Sam to block the initial barrage, then moves orward to give his partner (and his wings) more room to maneuver. He continues along that side of the island, leaving Sam (and his wings) to cover the side with the terrified kitchen staff. He only fires a single three-shot burst -- up at the supports for the rack nearest to his mercenary. Probably he isn't expecting the pots and pans to seriously injure his opponent, but it certainly is loud and clangy and distracting. He breaks into a dead sprint and slams his shield directly into the mercenary in a bid to knock him down. Sam's wings are abruptly no longer wings, shifting behind him to make a large shield. As he turns and puts himself between the mercs and the kitchen staff, their barrage rattles off the wings without harm. He's moving quickly after this, hopefully drawing their fire away from the poor kitchen staff's hiding place. He's heading towards the back room, though skirting around to the other side of the island from Steve. His wings are still folded up protective between him and the gunfire -- though when he gets closer one slams out quick and hard towards the merc nearer him. Bullets ricochet off Steve's shield and Sam's wings -- the first merc falls for the clanging pots, stepping back as they descend upon him, his gun lifting just long enough for Steve's shield to slam him with roughly the force of a mule's kick. He's driven back to the wall, crashing against it; it cracks beneath the impact. The staff duck and cover underneath Sam's wing, the woman tugging at her coworker to move once Sam has slipped away -- a brief look of gratitude is given. Then she's yanking her coworker out the door, staying low. The second merc is still firing, bullets continuing to ping, trying to step back from Sam and get some distance. He doesn't realize just how far that wing can reach until it's striking him aside, sending him spinning toward a counter-top. He hits it with his back turned to Sam. A precious moment is spent struggling to turn around and re-aim -- but all it would take is another slap of that wing to knock him down and out. Meanwhile, something's going on in the dining room. The high-temp figure has moved from the back room to the dining room -- the one with two figures remaining. It's hard to make out amidst the chaos, but hot-head looks like he just decked one of the two and took his gun. He's now shouting at him -- the third figure is standing against a wall, looking panicked. Hot-head turns; he can't see Sam, but he seems to judge where he is pretty accurately: "Yo, fuckos! We got a civvie in here. Stay where you are -- let 'em pass. THEN we rumble. You savvy?" Through his goggles, Sam can see the gun that hothead grabbed -- it heats up right before it snaps in two. Steve whirls, keeps on eye on the remaining merc, though he doesn't seem concerned about Sam's ability to dispose of him. At the thump and yelling from the dining room he tilts his head. He mouths "savvy?" in slightly exaggerated fashion, his brows furrowing with obvious suspicion. He is shifting off to the side of the door anyway, and raising his shield though he keeps his weapon pointed at the ceiling. Glances at Sam and tips his head to indicate the other side of the door. "Alright then, send 'em out." "Savvy?" Sam is echoing aloud as Steve mouth it. His eyebrows have hiked up high, and with the goggles rendering his expression a bit more impassive it makes the second flex of his wing look dissonantly casual when it cracks hard at the hand of the merc trying to re-aim. "Man's heating up in there. Stole a trick from Jax, just melt a whole damn gun." One of the mercs Steve is hovering over stirs, vaguely looks up -- then, after a moment of consideration, decides passing out is the best recourse. Meanwhile: There is a moment of silence -- Sam can see through his goggles that Hot-head is gesturing to the third figure, the one who DIDN'T grab a gun. Hot-head's voice is audible, muffled: "--go ahead. They won't fuck with you, man. Just keep your hands up and move slow." A staff member emerges from the doorway, pimply-faced and terrified. His hands are WAY up. He looks at Sam, then at Steve -- briefly does a double-take, his hands starting to lower -- right before Hot-head's voice booms somewhere in the back: "And don't gawk -- keep moving!" The staff member blanches, mutters something like an apology, and runs past Steve and Sam. The other figure -- the one who lingered in the back room -- is now moving to join Hot-head. For just a moment, they're locked in murmured discussion. Sam and Steve might pick up a gruff female voice asking a question: "--fuck is 'savvy'?" -- and an equally gruff reply: "Oh, fuck off, Sarge." Hot-head turns and picks up a very large, very heavy table. His voice booms again: "Alright! The kid clear?" Presuming the answer is an affirmative -- he proceeds to slam the high-density table through the doorway, its top facing Steve and Sam, turned long-ways. It rips through the frame in a blast of plaster -- with a large, brawny tattoo'd figure rushing in behind it. He's using it as a makeshift shield to try and drive both of them back. Cinnamon rushes forward with roughly the force of an incoming semi-truck, and his body is glowing hot. Steve's brows hike up at Sam's report, and he might have lapsed into an impressed look if he weren't busily watching for duplicity from the evidently unduplicitous staff member now fleeing to safety. "Yeah, he's clear!" And then he's stumble-scramble-backflipping away from the wall as the table explodes through it. Lands on his feet with the shield up and his carbine raised beside it to stitch a three-round burst at the glowing red figure through the plaster and sawdust. "I am on the rebound," he tells Cinnamon, shuffling to the side as he does so in a bid to get him to turn his flank to Sam, "but you're just not as hot as my last boyfriend." Sam's wings flare, and a brief thrust pulls him higher into the air than a regular jump might have managed -- he lands squarely atop the table as it crashes into the wall behind him. One of his wings is pulling around shieldlike to curl in front of him, and from behind it he's taking aim at Cinnamon. "He's on the rebound," he's telling Cinnamon with an air of concerned warning, "you do not want to see how this man works his feelings out." As the cloud of dust fades, Cinnamon's massive, muscular figure emerges -- a bare-chested white man who looks like he belongs in the wrestling ring. Veins of glowing orange crawl out across his chest, seeking and finding the three holes Steve's carbine plugged into him. As they seal in a flash of heat, he looks from Sam to Steve with an expression of concern: "Oh, for real? Shit, man. That sucks." His brief sympathy is punctuated by the emergence of another figure stepping through the table-shaped hole: The woman is built like a tank, with her hair shaved down to peach fuzz. She's clad in black body armor that looks... Enhanced. An external mechanical spine connects the nape of her neck down to her pelvis, built into the armor itself. As she moves, segments of the spine click up and down in rapid succession. Pepper grins. "Well if it ain't Yankee Doodle Dandy and his sidekick -- Darkwing Duck." Her accent is sharp and harsh -- Scouse, maybe. Cinnamon frowns and turns to Pepper: "Sarge, you can't say shit like that just cuz he's Black -- that's fucked up." Pepper keeps her focus on Sam and Steve, still grinning -- but her eyebrow twitches. "We really need to get you off Twitter." She lifts both fists -- enclosed in bracers with extended handles for her to grip, each with mounted miniature barrels. With just a twist, the barrels erupt in short bursts of gunfire toward Sam -- rubber bullets, but that doesn't mean a hit won't take someone out. She's trying to keep him on the defensive -- so that... ...Cinnamon is free to charge through the kitchen island, ripping through metal like it was tinfoil. He rushes to slam Steve's shield with a shoulder-check carrying roughly the amount of force you'd need to send a wrecking ball through a foot of concrete. "He's not my sidekick," Steve fires back somewhat automatically, "his wings aren't dark, and it's not Twitter anymore. Get with the times." When Cinnamon charges, he looks as though he's just going to brace for impact. But at the last moment he lunges forward, drops his center of gravity way down -- then braces for impact, suddenly more a tripping hazard than a target. "You really on Twitter, how'd you miss --" Sam is starting, at Cinnamon's sympathy, but then he's pivoting with a lift of eyebrow at Steve that is rendered even more skeptical by his impassive goggles: "-- naaaw, you telling me you really call that shit X now?" The rubber bullets are thumping heavy but harmless off of Sam's folded wing. In the next moment his other wing is pulling in, too, and swathed in this armored cylinder he's launching himself straight off the table, barrel-rolling directly for Pepper -- between the wing's thrusters and the exoskeleton armor he's coming in with a force that might be expected of a speeding car rather than a flying person. Cinnamon slams right into Captain America's shield -- but at a far lower point than he expected. He's sent rolling straight forward as his legs give out, diving into the practiced tumble you'd expect from someone experienced with taking falls. Perhaps surprisingly, the tumble wrenches his whole body to the side in mid-air -- swooping his legs around in a twirl that looks downright graceful... and ends with Cinnamon on his feet, right behind (and besides) Steve. It takes him just an instant to recover (he pulls off the old three point superhero landing, and spends an instant just reveling in pulling it off), but then he's spinning 'round to try and snag under Steve's arm from behind and pull him up out of that crouch -- to hurl him at high-speed right at Sam's lunging figure. "STONE COLD STUNNER!" he bellows, despite this having precisely zero resemblance to Steve Austin's signature move. Regardless, his skin is blistering hot, right now. Whether or not Steve gets thrown, Pepper braces for Sam's impact. She has an instant to drop into a semi-crouch, arms retracting to guard her chest and face (there's a lot of plating on those forearms) as a high-pitched whine emits from her skel-suit. The feet clamp down -- concrete cracks. However she and Sam meet, her own suit is tanking the full brunt of the hit -- albeit after it skids back several feet, tearing up the floor and pushing her into the room with a cowering libertarian. "Right?! Like, sag off -- what, is it a soddin' porn-site, now?" "Of course I don't call it that!" Steve sounds faintly affronted. He probably didn't expect that kind of acrobatic maneuvering from Cinnamon, and maybe that's why he's so easily plucked up from his stance. Once plucked, though, he proves a little harder to throw, his hand reversing to grasp Cinnamon's forearm. He might have burns later despite his armor and gauntlets, but that's a problem for Future Steve. Present Steve is swing himself along Cinnamon's follow-through to land in a crouch and throw him with the force he'd meant for throwing Steve. "I'll take any excuse to tell future folks to get with the times." Sam is swiveling as he lands near Pepper, one of his weapons drawn from his holster to fire at Pepper's complaining suit, not a firearm but an intense electrical pulsing. "Kinda porn for white libertarian debate-me bros," he's musing along with this, kind of idly watching Cinnamon go flying (or maybe his goggles just trend towards blase.) Right after saying this, he's tipping his chin up towards the cowering man in the corner. "Yo. Bet you jus' love Twitter." "--ohshit IRISH WHIP--" Cinnamon manages to get out, right before Steve's reversal connects -- whipping him about and hurling him into the air. Again, that's not what an Irish Whip is, but -- Pepper's still semi-crouched when Sam lands. When he pulls the electrical pulse on her and fires, she straightens with a grin -- the suit sparks with a few light crackles. Her fists clench, whirring with menace. She's winding up for a high-powered hit. "Red already used that one on me, lil bird. When you wake up, you let 'er know I owe--" Cue Cinnamon's trajectory smashing right into Pepper's side. She had a moment to prep for Sam's hit, but she doesn't see this one coming -- she goes crashing hard through the dining room, shattering a very expensive table on the way toward the far wall. Said wall -- made of solid concrete -- crunches under impact with Pepper's shoulder. She's shouting and cursing, spine clicking as she struggles to disentangle herself from a recovering Cinnamon -- who's body continues to sizzle. Peter Lawson (a wiry man in spectacles who's dressed like a discount Lex Luthor about to attend a TED talk) struggles to his feet as he fishes out his phone. He holds it up to Sam like some sort of shield: "I've got -- whatever they're paying you, I'll triple it, right now--" The way he's holding his phone... he's probably recording this. Steve sticks his own three-point superhero landing, armor singed and smoking here and there. He's keeping one wary eye on the supergoon pileup in the dining room as he closes the distance to Sam and their target, fast enough to intimidate anyone who isn't used to seeing him in action. If that doesn't intimidate Lawson, perhaps Captain America knocking the phone out of his hand and crushing it unceremoniously underfoot might do the trick. "Back in my day, those debates ended in 'meet me out back'," he's telling Sam as he politely knocks Lawson out for him. "Let's exfil." Sam is just staring, impassive, at Lawson's pleading. His head shakes, and he has not dignified the offer with a response before Steve gets there. "White boys think they can buy'n sell anyone," he's muttering more to himself than to his strapping blond All-American teammate. He's scooping the man up in a superman carry before he hits the ground, ducking back through the hole in the wall to -- simply blast a second hole in those enormous floor-to-ceiling windows so he can abscond with his quarry.