You all basically follow W 76th Street from 338 Columbus Avenue southeast down to Central Park West, where part of the group (Ace and Block) pauses on top of a tower at 160 Central Park West (Fourth Universalist Society) to look on from above. X undulates further, crossing the street and slowly approaching the Central Park wall, immediately to the left of the M10 bus stop (Central Park w/w 75 st). For some reason, the street lights that normally provide almost-daylight-level lighting here seem to all be out: the T intersection there is uncommonly dark: the stop light is still functional, but it doesn’t shed enough light to read by, much less to see anything other than the silhouettes of those few walking nearby. Comms pops and a new voice crackles, “Hmmm.” You recognize it as a low-range Leeson. The icon pulsing at the lower left display kinda’ gives it away, too. “That’s rather interesting...”
The link crackles with a half frustrated grumpy hurrumph of "You can say THAT again, Mister Magic." as Ace adds his nickel’s worth.
Trolling slowly, quietly, even menacingly, is a mirror-reflective black Phaeton Limo. You can bet it’s not lost, but it *is* looking for something -or somebody - as it creeps up the street, passing the W 76th Street corner slithering further northeast towards W 77th Street, the matching black-mirrored windows betraying nothing of what lies inside. Sinister.
As the Phaeton is performing its ominous crawl, Ace opens a Search in his head to try and find any data on it. Almost instantly the car’s ownership data, registrations, etc. return as [CLASSIFIED], which is essentially just [“Not accessible by the likes of you.”] He blinks, and does the Search again, getting the same instant results. In hacker terms, somebody’s actively blocking for it, which almost certainly means they’re up to something. But what? He quickly send a message on the encrypted channel, “Primary. Three. Possible Hostile. Phaeton Limo. Black. Heading up Central Park West. There’s nothing on the rap sheets about it - like it doesn’t exist. Will continue to watch. Out.” He tries to slug the message with the trid clip, but for some reason all you get is a square of static mess, worse than a “broken link” icon. But you all can figure out what he’s talking about.
As you guys approach your positions you note that beyond the wall Central Park is engulfed in darkness - yet off in the distance you see what looks like might be a barrel fire - well, something along those lines, anyway. The merry distant flicker of the yellow-orange-red flames provides a guidepoint from deep within the gloom. Reggie (and his goons) are also out there in the oppressively dark park, somewhere.
Block concentrates as he lifts both himself and Ace up off the roof of the tower, far up into the sky, and then across Central Park West and into Central Park, itself. He begins his overhead sojourn across the wall, looking and listening intently for any changes in the situation.
“Team,” you hear Tiny’s voice crackle, a light whisper rising from the light static floor of the frequency. “Reggie has not officially entered the zone yet,” he patiently explains, “so this sojourn could be just him picking up local information - from a local informant - or some ammo, or just taking a constitutional walk - it’s anybody’s guess. But he’s still legally running, just running out of time. His mob bosses are spazzing out uncontrollably out there, so I don’t think this was part of their plan.” Tiny coughs, takes a quick, raspy breath. “I’ll relay more as I hear it. Also,” he adds at the last second. “it would seem that someone hit the comms van with a rocket launcher, so whatever you do you DON’T want to go back that way,” he chuckles, “At least not for a few hours. NYPD’s best are still picking up the pieces, and it don’t look like there were any survivors. Film at eleven.” The channel drops back into blessed silence.
X approaches the wall then immediately bounds over it, disappearing completely into the nebulous shadow beyond. From his vantage point, new lines of information sprout as his extensive sense spring to life. He quickly rolls off to nearby concealment. His disembodied voice hums across the command frequency, "Acknowledged. Going for a walk. Two, Three. Keep eyes and ears peeled for target." A few seconds pass, then X’s voice again rings onto the channel, "Two. Three. Applying illumination to target zone." Almost at that exact second a super-bright, painfully blazing ball of light streaks heavenward leaving a ghostly tail behind it; a localized meteor springing skyward. The entire neighborhood basks in its color-bleaching light, and shadows that start long along the ground recede rapidly as the miniature sun gains altitude, as if Promethius just released the stolen fire back to the gods. Dazzling.
Ace, just thinking about the advice from Tiny about the freshly-rocketed media van, reacts somewhat differently, releasing a startled scream of terror "ROOOOCKEEEET! EVADE!EVADE!EVADE!" He’s screaming loud enough to be heard for blocks *without* radio gear. Unfortunately for those of you on the same channel, he’s screaming in your hears to *also* be heard for blocks. Actually, everybody’s comm gear automatically reduces his levels to “merely” painful. But it gets the point across. (No, Ace doesn’t get his “brown shorts” award at this event - he made his save. Of course, it may be days before *anything* passes *that* sphincter…)
Right about the time the flare illuminates the night sky, Grunyon thinks to himself, "Man, I need someone that can teach me the Invisibility spell…” He immediately jinks away from the sudden arrival of the midnight sun, heading mainly southeast... Had that been a real anti-air rocket instead of mere illumination (as if anybody could call *that* "mere") this might well have been a different story... |
