(AoH)[Fic] Unethical Experiments

[Fisher Capra]

January 7th, 2011,

Mission

2:00 AM

The slumber of the neighborhood made the visual look picturesque, but that was a sweet slight shine on a boring, dragging assignment, as far as Detective Ray Fenton, BCPD was concerned. Vice had put them out keeping a stakeout on suspected drug dealing, but nothing. No activity whatsoever.

The coffee steaming from a duo of mugs in the front cupholder was the only thing keeping him, and his partner Detective Mack Washington from dropping asleep- a fatal fact since Mack was driving.

Suddenly, Mack stomped on the brakes, jarring Fenton from his gloomy zoned-out state, and he suddenly spotted - with a moment of shock, a figure in the headlights, walking down the street and freezing as the car wheels screeched.

Fortunately, the police car did not strike the pedestrian, coming to a halt in time, but the man - it was clear enough to tell that, dropped something. Both Fenton and Washington found themselves exiting the car.

"Look buddy, don't jaywalk in the goddamn-" Fenton cut off as he and Washington got a clear view of their near-roadkill, and their hands dropped to their sidearms as an instinctive precaution.

The man was suited in a pure white labcoat, but with a set of black goggles on with the image of the DNA helix over each eye space. His head turned back to the officers from his... device, one would call it, an antenna mounted onto some form of gadgetry, neither were tech geeks. From his facial expression, he was as pissed at them as they had been at him.

"And you, doughnut-eater, may be thwarting SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS... if my work is damaged." Before the cops could say another word, the man pulled out a blue-green capsule, crushed between his fingers, and tossed the powder that had been inside at the policemen.

Fenton started coughing like the worst cold, and collapsed out cold. Likewise was the fate of Washington. The supervillain looked back to his device and examined it thoroughly. "What a relief. I'll be able to set the DNAlterator up for testing and be safely out of range before it activates."

He toggled a few buttons, it started humming, and the mad scientist started walking away. An expeditious pace would see him back at his lab in no time, and he could observe everything from there in perfect detail. That was right, Splicer would add to the world's body of genetic knowledge, and be hailed for it someday...

At 2:10 AM, the device activated.

[Talos]

2:20 a.m. - Olympus Technology Inc, Alemeda, CA

"Wake him up."

"What? Seriously?" the junior tech asked incredulously.

"That was the police dispatcher, they got over sixty calls into 9-1-1 in the past ten minutes, all in the Mission neighborhood. Wake him up, the shit is hitting the Fran."

The tech quirked an eyebrow at the pun but swiveled around an initiated a wake up signal. In the other room the lights flickered on, and charging conduits disengaged from the metal man shape. The single amber eye in the center of Talos' head lit up, blinking for a moment before staying on with a steady glow. The effect was much like somebody blinking themselves awake, except that the techs insisted that there was no mechanical reason behind it.

"What time is it?" the deep voice of the cyborg asked.

"Nearly two thirty in the morning. The police called, there's something going on in the Mission, something big." The senior tech walked into the room with a tablet, tapping at the screen. "You're set to go, everything is in the green."

Talos stepped away from the huge framework, and toward the opening doors to the late night. "Well, at least we can see how the nightvision you guys put in works. Testing comms, you reading?"

"We got you," the junior tech said into his headset. "Knock 'em out big guy."

Talos wiggled his head and rolled his shoulders; motions entirely unneeded for the mechanical body to operate. "Yeah, yeah ..." Talos mumbled as he took a half dozen bounding steps and launched into the air towards the north and west.

[Fisher Capra]

2:25 AM - Approaching Mission

Psi-Warrior supposed he should really be going to sleep. Just because he had made super-heroics a regular part of his life and sitting at home watching stuff on the TV was frustratingly boring, didn't mean that he should be out past midnight. But falling asleep would mean falling to his death - levitating well above the buildings of the city below.

And when that flash of light had appeared, surrounding an entire neighborhood, much of Mission, he realized with shock - it was a sign to investigate if nothing else. As he zoomed into, and closed onto the scene he could hear screams and shouts everywhere. Worse, inhuman, bestial growls, snarls, braying. The door to an apartment building slammed open, and as Psi-Warrior began to descend, a dark-skinned man, still in pajamas, was shaking, yelling... mutating?!

Before the hero's eyes, the civilian was twisting and transforming into an monstrous form. The shudder hit Psi-Warrior as he realized this was going on all over the neighborhood! The poor transformed bystander suddenly noticed the psychic - and baring fangs and claws now, pounced!

[Talos]

The deck of Bay Bridge thudded under Talos' feet as he charged down the west-bound lane toward Bay City. His mechanical legs pumped like pistons propelling him forward faster than the light overnight traffic on the bridge. The techs said that he topped out right around a hundred and twenty miles an hour when we was moving full out; he was doing as much now as he charged across the bay. The span between Alemeda and Bay City was over three miles, and too far for his current locomotive systems to send him in a single jump, but he was able to get to the bridge in two short hops and then sprint to the mainland easily enough.

Nearing the end of the bridge he leaped into the air once more and bypassed the geometric network of city streets between the bridge and the Mission neighborhood. He had little control over his aim when in the air like this, something he hoped that they would remedy eventually, but he had lucked out this time, neither car nor building would be underfoot when he landed.

Nearly nine hundred pounds of metal, plastic, ceramics, and the like crunched into the pavement in the middle of 21st Street near Folsom; nearby a sewer cap hopped out of its circular fitting and clanked back. Talos took a short hop, barely ten feet, to the sidewalk to avoid any oncoming traffic, and then looked around. There were sounds coming from the nearby buildings. Cries of inhuman nature that reminded Talos of the way the animals had reacted to him when he had tried to visit the zoo. A door was flung open and a young woman dashed out into the street before toppling over. Behind her something like an armored gorilla bashed its way through the too narrow doorframe.

Talos moved like lightning, interposing between the creature and the woman, only to be batted aside from behind. The woman was gone and a similar creature crouched where she had been, scale glistening wetly in the light of a street lamp. "What ... the ... heck?" Talos asked, before both of the creatures charged him.

[Fisher Capra]

Another form intersected with the charging creatures, which turned out to be the limp form of another creature, a mottled sort of two-legged bear, knocking them into a mutated pile. Talos looked the way the improvised projectile came, and saw the hovering figure with the distinctive blue ninja suit on.

Neither had really met before, but both recognized the other - the cyborg official city defender and the earliest-known Bay City hero after the Mariner. "Psi-Warrior. Do you know what's going on?" Talos asked as the psychic floated down to the ground.

"Something's changed all the people in the neighborhood, into these." Psi-Warrior said, a hint of repressed worry in his voice. "I don't know how-"

"I DO."

The noise itself was something to wince at, but coming up to them was what looked to be a levitating spherical robot with a glass eye and speaker holes below it. "Darn volume..." the voice repeated much lower in volume now, "Please, heroes, this is a major scientific experiment, and I, Splicer, demand you leave it be. The DNAlterator must be unhampered in its function."

[Talos]

Talos rolled his eyes, eye really, at the absurd scientist. The effect was lost to the other men though, merely a minor pivoting of the lenses under the amber cover of Talos' lone "eye". The titanic hero nodded though, "Well since you put it that way, sure, yeah, we'll just leave you to ... umm ... whatever it is you have going on here."

Talos eyed the shapes that had filled the area around them. Humanoid shapes most of them, with scraps of clothing, if any at all, and features that seemed to blend man and animal. The scientist inside seemed happy with the reply, "Excellent! I am so glad that someb-"

CLANG!

Talos' hardened steel fists came down on the metal sphere with the force of a truck, sending the vehicle careening to one direction while he rebounded and landed on the ground with a thud. He looked over at the only other man, "I am so hoping that you are the real deal and not just some guy in pajamas."

"DESTROY THEM!" Splicer screamed into his microphone, feedback mixing with his shrill voice to send a squawk through the speakers. Apparently at his command the creatures lumbered, leaped, slithers, or otherwise charged forward at the two heroes. A think not unlike the cross between a bear and an elephant slammed into Talos with shocking speed, great arms grabbing up the hero like a rag doll and squeezing. Metal groaned and shrieked as the land titan crushed the city's defender with strength born from genetic tampering.

[Fisher Capra]

Psi-Warrior too found the mutated citizenry moving quickly upon him, but with a deep breath, he leaped and with telekinetic adjustment, did a sudden whirling twist over the claws, fangs and other instruments of injury, sweeping a hand across like a wizard.

Crimson forms of shuriken, dozens of them, flew out in an arc of psionic energy, knocking down and back the wave of bestial creatures, but the metal shriek of Talos' struggle grew louder. But the psychic hero focused, and the behemoth to its surprise, found itself yanked off and launched like a big football into the crowd.

Then avian screeches filled the air, and before he could react, it was Psi-Warrior's turn to land in the shit, as raptor-like figures with sharp talons and beaks latched onto his arms and hauled the blue-costumed hero into the sky.

[Talos]

Talos sagged to one knee, his exoskeleton was compromised in several places already, but not critically. Pushing up he scanned the area quickly, dropping a pair of hyena-like creatures. The bear thing was out for the count it seemed. Talos saw the other hero hauled into the air, and would have frowned if he could, they were getting overwhelmed by numbers, and crowd control was easy enough if you had the right set of skills.

Raising his arms over his head Talos clapped his hands together as hard as he could, a massive shockwave of displaced air billowed outward from him in a near sphere, stunning some of the beastmen, leaving others blinking as their ears rang, and even knocking a few senseless. The shockwave hit the avian mutants and Psi-Warrior like a slap and the birds released the hero thirty feet from the pavement as they squawked and circled, reeling from the thunderclap.

"Aaaarrr! NO! NO, No, no, no, NO!" Splicer screamed. "You are ruining everything!" The sphere actually seemed to be bobbing about in anger. Talos squared his shoulders and planted his feet trusting that however it was that the other hero had flown in would allow him to avoid falling to the ground. He was prepared to leap at the metal bubble, and its insane occupant, when a purple and yellow beam lanced out into the crowd behind him.

Spinning Talos followed the beam as it struck one of the mutated citizens, warping the already twisted creature further, even as it began to grow ... and grow ...

[Fisher Capra]

The rat-like mutant with a more serpentine tail extended, with the tail growing to impressive lengths, and soon the mouse bodied mutant toward the sky, with a massive python tail and roared. "Yes," Splicer called out, "Go, Mouse-thon Rex!"

Psi-Warrior came to a halt hovering a few inches above the group, in stupefaction. "You sound like a Pokemon trainer with poor naming sense." Then he tried to gauge the mass of the critter, then decided, as it appeared to lunge forward - whatever.

The Mouse-thon stopped short against telekinetic resistance, and slowly - Psi-Warrior grunted at the mental strain, went completely off the ground, slowly. The Mousethon howled and swept its tail about, but that only worked to knock away and swat the crowd of changed citizenry around them.

"Oh posh on all that!" Splicer snapped as the sphere started to move away from the scene. "They'll still be changed as long as the DNAlterator functions, and that's what matters." Then the swinging massive tail collided with the sphere, and it went flying over the buildings like an oversized baseball.

"He's right." Psi-Warrior admitted. "We need to find this thing and stop it."

[Talos]

"Oh, sure, makes perfect sense. Except," Talos paused long enough to dodge a massive rodent claw, and punch a parakeet from hell in the face. "Except that we don't know where it is. I don't suppose you can read that guy's mind and find out?" Talos sidestepped again to avoid the huge rat-thing's foot, and then leveled a punch at the ankle that resulted in a crack like gunfire followed by a howling squeal from the beast.

"I think I may have made it mad." The enormous beast swatted Talos aside like so much trash, sending him tumbling into a parked car. The creature was on all fours now, three really, since its left rear ankle appeared to be swelling, likely broken from Talos' attack. "Go after Splicer," Talos shouted, hauling himself out of the ruined vehicle, accompanied by the sounds of metal on metal squealing. "I can deal with a mouse, I don't care how big it looks, but we need to stop this mad man and turn these people back to normal."

Talos leaped up and came crashing down on the mutant's head feet first. The mouse-thing, or whatever it was, groaned and fell to the pavement, stunned by the impact. "Hurry, before this gets out of control!"