Geosh headed deeper into the drainage system, following the sound.
OOC: I presume @TheMightyObsidianDude is cool with this.
The light got significantly worse past the storm drain. A couple of hard right angles lead Geosh to a dark tunnel, and a ways down that tunnel was the same glowing lights, although rather high off the ground.
The metal tinkling had completely stopped save for a few small scraping sounds now and then, undoubtedly coming from the light source.
“I guess so,” she says with a shrug. Not like that would make talking with Kate any easier; best to just avoid her if she could.
It was getting hard for Geosh to see, but he knew by the sound that he was close. He could hear an occasional scrape that told him that whatever it was hadn’t moved. There was a faint light, not enough to see by, but he could follow it. "Come out, come out, wherever you are…” Geosh mumbled as he neared the light.
It was good for Geosh that he had activated the armor. Out of the dark at lightning speed flew two razor blades, slamming into his chest and ricocheting off. The pair of lights would be fully visible now, before they suddenly disappeared.
What followed was the same metal noise he had heard earlier, but now a hundred times louder, and directly in front of him.
Geosh still wasn’t sure what it was, but it had attacked with no real provocation, so Geosh decided to ask questions later. He materialized the sword and used two hands to slash at where he thought it was.
There was a crunching sound as he cut through… Something. The next second a large body of mass was moving towards him, practically falling on him. His armor would easily withstand the attack, but any gaps would need to be quickly covered if he didn’t want severe lacerations.
The reason? Even with the extremely limited light, with it this close to his face, it was obvious to see the entire surface - likely the entirety of whatever it was - was composed of razor blades.
Fortunately for Geosh there were few real gaps in the armor, and he could fill in the gaps in the armor; unfortunately, that meant the joints lost any mobility, and it was an all or nothing trick. Geosh did it though. Now Geosh was in a hollow statue of armored man that completely sealed. “Suffocation is preferable to being sliced up by a bladey-thing, it’s more poetic. Except nobody is going to know about it if I die down here. Sigh… I guess I’ll have to get out of this before my air runs out.” Geosh thought to himself, after a moment he began throwing his weight back and forth, hoping to tip the “statue” he was in and hoping that he would be clear of the “bladey-thing”, as Geosh was calling it.
There was for a moment a violent scraping sound, as all the razor blades ran over the exterior of the armor. Then, silence, and through the holes in the armor’s helmet orange light shone through.
“What in blazes…?” A raspy voice mumbled, and the light ran across the armor. Then, as Geosh began leveraging his weight, the outside figure showed a significant hold over the armor before suddenly letting go and allowing it to plop into the murky, wet sludge on the ground.
“Well if that ain’t a party trick.” The light shone overtop and there was a soft scraping sound outside of the helmet. “Still in there, gorgeous?”
OOC: there’s no holes for light to shine through
IC: Geosh felt something grab the “statue he was in, then let go, letting him fall to the ground. Then Geosh heard scraping by his head. “I hope I’m out of immediate danger, this armor is gonna be down for a few minutes.” Geosh mumbled as he retracted the armor and shot up into a fighter’s pose, just in case. He couldn’t really see, but he hoped that whoever was scraping wasn’t the behind him, and he hoped it wasn’t the bladey-thing, if it was he was screwed no matter where it was.
OOC:
Then how the heck does he see
IC:
Geosh was, admittedly, a little too close for comfort to the large monstrosity of twisted metal shards, razorblades, and loose screws as it towered over him. The two bright lights which shone on him were the eyes of whatever this was, and the reflections off the moist sewer walls faintly revealed the existence of a horrible, twisted metal mouth just below.
“Guess that’s a yes.” The monster grumbled, using the same raspy voice Geosh had heard earlier. “Now what are you doing down here? You some kind of mask?”
“Me? I just travel in sewers wearing armor. And you look kinda like a pincoushin threw up on you. Who, or what are you?” Geosh asked.
The figure scowled at the comment, the various metal fragments making up his body turning and flipping in irritation, which created the same metallic noise he had heard before. “Switchblade,” He snarled, and then, with a smile, “So clearly not some time-traveling crusader or your average Dark Souls addict. Pleasure to,” He extended his hand as if for a handshake, revealing it consisted entirely of metal shards, and retracted it with a villainous grin. “Make your acquaintance.”
“So is sewer-jogging your day job, or just a hobby? Because while venom runs the streets of Metropolis, I run the underbelly. And don’t you forget it!” His toothy, mechanical grin was almost as wide as his whole head, but if he was intending to kill Geosh, he probably would’ve done it by now.
Geosh was pretty sure this switchblade didn’t intend to harm him at the moment. That being said Geosh was pretty sure he couldn’t turn his back on this guy.
“Oh, it’s just a hobby of mine, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you down here before, or anywhere else. Fact I’ve never heard of you, are you sure you run the underbelly of all metropolis?” Geosh questioned, hoping to at least keep him talking till his armor cooled down.
“Anyone willing to argue the position can talk it out with me,” He growled, although it didn’t seem angry. No, growling just seemed to be his automatic reaction to things.
“What’s more important right now is that you snuck up on me nice and quiet while I was perusing the local news,” He rasped. “How would you like a commission?”
“Funnily enough, I was originally looking for a job when I stumbled upon you. So I’m listening, of course it depends what the job is as to weather I’ll do it.” Geosh answered, silently counting down the minutes till his armor was ready, he had about two minutes left till it was ready.
Something square-ish crawled up Switchblade’s body and into his hand. It was a lighter.
“It’s hard to accomplish these sort of things by yourself,” He began, flicking the lighter several times to ignite it. “Look here.” He extended his metallic limb to the wall, revealing by the glow of the lighter a series of lines extending over each other and often disappearing or beginning along a specific edge, like it was roads inside a city.
“This is the Luthor campaign bus trail,” He hissed. “I’ve tracked it nationally. Every route here was covered invariably by his campaign, a campaign of violent trampling of the rights of the citizens of Metropolis. I’m going to start being a thorn in his side.”
“Here,” Switchblade jammed a sharp metal finger into the wall. “Here is where the campaign bus will chart its next campaign; at the steps of the capitol building. Prior to that it will dock behind this hotel” His finger scraped across to a large dot on the map. “And that is where you will board it if possible and obtain anything valuable or essential. If boarding is impossible you will use that excellent sword of yours to make the vehicle as unusable as possible.”
He closed the lighter, cutting off all light other than his ominous eyes. The metal noise continued as he retreated backwards into the darkness. “Alerting Luthor will do no good, as I have other ways of stopping him. This is merely a warning. If you accept this and succeed you will be paid handsomely, here, where you found me. If not, forget we ever met.”
And with that, the giant mass of metal shards slunk down a corner and disappeared from view. The two minutes were up; if he wanted to try and chase him he was likely too slow to evade Geosh.
Geosh weighed the options, either try and take down switchblade now or get info on luthor. “Luthor is such a model citizen.” Geosh thought with heavy sarcasm. “I better find out what this dirt is first.”
So Geosh set out for the hotel.
Mark nodded understandingly, with a small chuckle, “Of course. How about we go get you that glass of water now, yeah?”
After knocking Gideon halfway across the street, the leader of the group hadn’t been expecting him to get back up, and yet he did. The man squinted for a moment, as if trying to make sure what he was seeing was really there, before he grit his teeth in a frustrated grin, “Nice trick.” He remarked tersely, “Let’s see how long you can keep it up.”
And with that, he began to advance in long, stomping strides towards him, throwing his arms out to grip Gideon around the shoulders.
“The guys who put you here are the courts, and this is a prison, not a daycare. Entertain yourself, before I do something that might get me fired.”
The guards lead the pair through the neatly ordered complex, packed to the brim with other metahuman or high risk criminals, eventually leaving the cell blocks entirely and heading down into a more staff-focused area of the prison. They passed off-duty guards, prison psychiatrists, cooks, even somebody who seemed to be the warden, until eventually being brought down a winding staircase to a foreboding, steel-clad door.
One of the guards stepped forward and tapped in a passcode, and the door slid open automatically. The room beyond was a painfully bright clinical white from a combination of the decor and overhead LED lights, and was packed an assortment of other (assumedly) criminals in cuffs, looking just as perplexed at their current predicament. Khan and Mosh Pit didn’t have long to contemplate the scene before they were unceremoniously shoved into the room, the door quickly hissing shut behind them.
As this scene unfolded, Mrs Kelly continued her tirade against the masks, “Not only are their efforts destructive, they aren’t even competent! Many of the most notorious “supervillains” continue to go unpunished, including most of the key players in the destruction of Bludhaven. Governments the world over have settled into complacency when faced with such horrors, under the false assumption that the masks will deal with it. Well the fact of the matter is that the masks haven’t dealt with it, and will continue not dealing with it to ensure the public has something to fear, something that we have to be protected against - we can’t let this go on any longer!”
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Hayden laid on his cot wishing he was out of this situation as he dozed off.