13136/What Kind of Jerk Robs a Hospital

What Kind of Jerk Robs a Hospital
Date of Scene:	26 October 2022
Location:	NYU Langone Health Campus
Synopsis:	Bystanders of various levels of heroism intervene in a strange robbery in a hospital research building. High-tech guns and weird devices. Are the robbers there to steal some radiation device? Nope, they shot it. But they stole something else from the floor above. A tall guy with a teleporter. And what the hell is 'Systems Genomics' even? Tune in next week.
Cast of Characters:	Jean Grey, Natasha Romanoff, Rhona Lauren, Audra Meridian, Selina Kyle

---

Jean Grey has posed:
NYU Langone - the research hospital associated with the well-known University - is one of Manhattan's larger hospital networks. It's main campus is located between 1st Avenue and the East River just a few blocks south of the United Nations, and just east of the bustling University-adjacent bar scene of the Lower East Side. Along with Tisch Hospital, the primary emergency care and inpatient facility, its main campus there includes a number of smaller buildings focused on specialty medicine (including radiology and genetics) and research. It's a big, busy place!

Now, to answer the looming question: Most often, drug addicts.

Hospitals are not depositories of gold bars or jewelry, but they do tend to be well-stocked with a plethora of controlled substances. Many of these are quite valuable on the street, as well as being potentially addictive, and so there is always a concern toward this kind of theft, whether undertaken by the would-be user or those looking to sell. Theft happens both casually, and in more organized methods. So these kind of products are often secured in well-locked storerooms. On top of this, a variety of other lesser concerns mean that nearly all hospitals employ at least a bit of hired security. In Manhattan, it's probably higher than the average!

But hospitals not banks. And being cost-conscious, the methods employed tend to be proportionate to the threat. Secure, but not highly-secure, not military-grade nor super-power resistant.

And late one evening, it just happens to be that an alarm goes off at this particular hospital, suggesting that someone is doing something they shouldn't be. The alarms are run by a private company, alerting both the on-site and being routed via their control center to the local police precinct (allowing multiple points of intercept for people who may listen in on such calls). This is not an out of the way place, and the police will arrive relatively soon. But there are several factors suggesting they - let alone whatever rent-a-cops are on duty - may not be up to the job. For instance, there's the van parked out back of one of the campuses southern buildings where the break-in is happening, at a loading dock. The security guard there is already unconscious, and the few figures loitering near the van are suspiciously well-armed. They wear ski-masks and night-vision optics. Presumably, whoever is inside is equally well-armed.

These... are NOT junkies.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff has been handling something at the United Nations that involved her making sure something was resolved 'quietly' and now she's on her way back on a motorcycle towards the Avengers Mansion for the evening. As is typical, she pays a passing attention to the police frequencies while zooming along, in case there's anything of a scale enough to warrant assistance. Zooming in and out of traffic, she notes 'research hospital' and 'heavily armed' which is enough to pique her interest.
    She goes to chime on the Avengers's comm frequencies <<Moving to assist law enforcement>> Before gunning the engine and heading over towards the hospital. It will take her a few minutes to get there. She's weaving in and out of traffic but not 'catastrophe in the making' levels of speed.
    So only going about a hundred and eighty kilometers an hour. That's practically the speed limit by her standards.
    The data is fed into the HUD in her helmet, and the Black Widow goes to see if there's an internal network for the security cameras that's fed into something that the Avengers band can pickup to give her internal displays and data.

Rhona Lauren has posed:
Rhona is just a kid. Not even 18. She went to NYU to meet up with a friend of a friend who said they'd give her a tour of the campus, and sure enough they had. But, while in doing so, that same person was goofing around, and ended up falling down a flight of stairs, snapping their ankle and needing to go to the hospital. Being that Rhona has a car, she helped him to said medical facility, and was now on her way back to the car after dealing with all of that.

Rhona's dark hair is tied up in a bun on the back of her head, with two strands framing her face. A black leather choker around her throat, a black denim jacket, over a dark maroon colored top beneath, and some simple black jeans, with knee high boots on her feet, the youth is holding her phone as she walks back toward her fancy car that her parents bought her before they ditched her in the US and ran off back to London... She's sending a text message to someone back at Xaviers, when she catches movement out of the corner of her eye, and sees... the robbery taking place.

It's one of those things where you kind of don't believe what your eyes are telling you is happening, until there's no choice but to cope with what you're seeing.

"Oh. Oh... Shi---" Rhona says as she turns to duck behind a corner and put her back up against the bricks, hoping she had NOT been seen by the masked robbers!

Audra Meridian has posed:
You deal with severe weather and other natural disasters and you deal often with the various forms of emergency response. One of the advantages of often working with emergencies services is you do get radio access to some of their frequences.

Not that Audra had been actively monitoring any of them. Not when she was catching a few zzzs in the back of her SUV after having spent most of the day assisting a hazardous weather seminer at the University. But the emergency radio was set to go off on its own when a transmission came through, and the police bulletin bolted her awake. "What the..." She groused as she leaned forward between seats to stare at the radio while it repeated the transmission. "What the hell..." she repeated, because really, robbing a hospital? What the hell indeed.

All the same she was awake in a flash at the call of danger, grabbing her superhero gear as she bolted from the back of truck and taking off. Fortunately where she parked for the break wasn't too far away.

Especially not once she had her booster boots going and was dashing at furious speed, while getting the rest of her gear on and firing up in the process of racing to the hospital site.

Selina Kyle has posed:
    Selina doesn't keep to Gotham all the time. New York provides business opportunities than a notable philanthropist keeps tabs on if she's smart. She is, too. Entertaining invitations ahead of the holiday season puts her square in Manhattan. A besuited doorman holds open the doors for Riverpark restaurant for her. Memories of tapas taken in front of panoramic views of the East River are left behind the woman in her fashionably swishy black coat.
    East 29th makes for a bad pickup spot for private cars. She walks in her heeled boots in the shadow of the hospital and the glossy life sciences tower that is a kind of private incubator for VC money. One among many passing through the city at night, and clearly not concerned about being pawed at by some junkie.
    Bad for the junkie when she's pulling her gloves up and listening to the distant siren strobes from patrol cars. Sounds that she notes with professional interest, as they can make her evening exciting or downright problematic. Until the patrol cars arrive she doesn't stand much chance of picking up on the emergency radio without messing about with her own phone, tapped into back channels.
    Instead it's her luck to hear a warning mew from the dark. A lean grey tabby scoots out far enough to give her a look. Flat ears, low posture. Looking where it came from might give a glimpse of a few people who really shouldn't be there.
    What is this, New York pretending to be Gotham? She eases away to a wall for cover, soft-footing it.

Jean Grey has posed:
The hospital has cameras! Not, probably, a ton of them, covering every square foot of things. But there are security feeds from various areas: from the two main points of public entrance, the main front admission desk and the waiting area of the Emergency Room intake. The former is empty. The latter is very much not, because even at night, ERs are never not busy in NYC. Rhona's friend is sitting in there waiting, in fact. She will be for hours, since a sprained ankle is hardly a high triage priority.

There are a couple feeds of the ambulance bays and loading docks, including the one in question, with the goons!

Other cameras inside are more limited, to nurse stations and other nerve centers or the like. There are cameras overlooking the main pharmacy's back room and several of the other store-rooms on various floors. None of these show any activity. It's definitely not junkies.

In fact, it will take several moments of hopping through feeds until Natasha finds something: a camera in an underground parking area (they have a lot of these, for the safety), or rather one of its exits, into a staircase. Essentially, the route connects the loading dock here, via parking and some maintenance areas, to one of the out-buildings. It houses some advanced radiology equipment, and something called 'the Institute for Systems Genomics.'

Rhona's creeping doesn't seem to alert those guys by the van. They're alert, but definitely more for, well, obvious security people!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
There's enough cameras present to give her at least some awareness of what's going on. At the very least to know where things aren't going on. She goes to increase her speed. It's definitely not junkies. The group is far too coordinated and if it was just junkies they would be in hte public areas and making a ruckus, perhpas taking hostages or threatening to do things. The fact that thsoe areas seem normal, if not abandoned over.. That makes it definitely not junkies.
    She's now going about two hundred adn fifty kilometers an hour. She assesses that she'll be around the exterior in about ninety seven seconds at current speed. But that means she'll be making a lot of noise as she goes in and she'd rather not like to do that if there are hostages.
    Roughly sixty four seconds in, she goes to pull her bike to a stop, and goes to shut it down. Then the Black Widow is firing off a grappler dart to launch herself high up and over to the air of the nearest building, and if not interrupted to launch another grappling line to take her over towards the hospital rooftop.

Rhona Lauren has posed:
Tappity tappity tap tap tap!

(Yo, this city straight up suuucks.) Rhona texts her friend back at the school, her fingers rapidly working the keyboard before she gets an answer. The answer is a questioning one, and to answer IT, Rhona turns to look back around the corner.

Up her phone comes! Video recording taking place now, she aims it right at the masked robbers, even zooming in with a simple swipe. She's recording everything she can get, with a pretty great angle on them, and their vehicle.

Of course, this does have her peering around the corner of one of the side walls not too far away, with just a couple cement guard posts on the edge of the sidewalk beside her.

While recording, Rhona taps again, and is soon calling 911...

Audra Meridian has posed:
For more obvious, you say? How about the same bombast as a twister tearing through a trailer park? Obvious enough for you?

Because that is pretty much how Audra, having fully geared up in her super-tech while speeding along, hits the scene. And those men may not be junkies, and may be organized, but they're still kind of obvious not the sort of people to be lurking around a hospital loading dock near a van in middle of the night when one has an eye for such details. She skids to a stop, and makes a quick calculation on how to handle the matter. "Hey, guys!" she shouts. "You shouldn't be out, there's going to be a fog warning!" What? There isn't any fog? Any maybe that's enough to confuse them for a moment.

Until she raises her arms towards them, and the emitters of her Galeforce Gauntlets unleash a billowing combination of cold air and moisture towards them to create said fog, idealing thick enough to obscure their ability to aim with those guns.

Windrose is likely, unintentionally, providing a distraction for the more stealthy investigations.

Selina Kyle has posed:
    The skinny tabby prowls off into the night, still looking back now and then at Selina. Its eyes flash in the gloomy shadows that fill the corners and niches lacking a friendly light. She needs time to make an adjustment, glad that crossbody bags haven't gone out of fashion in the last couple months. Put a YSL or Prada logo on it and it passes. She has to innovate, turning her collar up and pulling the requisite hood out of the way. No cameras in that little corner to catch her making an adjustment or two.
    Mists creeping in thanks to Windrose shall be silently blessed, not questioned. Assistance to dampen the sound of her approach isn't looked in the mouth. Locking a pair of heel wedges in place, she gives her ankle a good wiggle. Solid enough to run on. Got to love an assist from one of the Bats.
    Then she chooses her path toward the bay where the cat warned her away from. Sorry, Tom. Her path leaves behind the ground as she free-runs for a wall. Those reinforced soles and gloves have enough tactility to keep her to the surface, kicking off to use a ledge for leverage. A display of acrobatics limited to close range slows her down, but it may mean the guys with their nightvision are just as hampered.

Jean Grey has posed:
The hospital overlooks the FDR drive, one of the island's major freeways, which runs along the river. So while the sound of Natasha's bike might be distinct in the distance... it's not that distinct over honking cabbies, jerk-ass UN diplomats in fancy luxury cars, and other traffic hazards of the area.

HOOOONNNNNK!

She grapples up to her vantage point, her aerial spy skills clearly in excess of what these lookouts are, well, looking out for. Rhona, on the other hand, keeps pushing it. There's foot traffic on all these adjacent streets (and they're positioned as not to be in direct line of sight from passer-bys, for fairly obvious reasons), some some amount of activity they might not notice. But miss investigative reporting with her phone leans out far enough that one gets a glimpse. "What the f-"

He makes a quick signal to alert the others. And to highlight that these guys are definitely playing more seriously than the average smash-and-grab might warrant, one snaps up and takes a shot with his weapon. Maybe it's pre-meditated, maybe it's simply reactive. But there's a flash as he pulls the trigger. Not the bright white-orange of a muzzle flare, but cooler, and lacking the sharp auditory crack.

A kind of blue zappy thing. At Rhona! Ohno!

This happens a moment before Audra arrives, doing things much more the 'flashy' way. Her quippage doesn't confuse them, causing them to raise their weapons, in the words of the great Frank Reynolds, start bastin'. Fortunately, it's just as the fog rolls in. Inside the billowing bank, the weapons make larger blue flashes as they discharge into the moist air, pulses of that blue energy streaking out of the cloud, illuminating their trails as they go.

Definitely some fancy guns they've got there! And in all the chaos out front, with Audra doing things the absolute opposite of the subtle way, and the fog bank and all the flashy pew-pew on top of that, Selina gets up and over unnoticed!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
There's no time for subtlety now. Not with whomever Natasha presumes is the rookie going in for the frontal sweep, right where all of the attackers can get her in what's a likely crossfire and will just fire bursts spread out an area to try and tag her. Which means more ricochets. And that means the stiaution has escalated. She might have preferred to ambush the group inside the hospital, but that's no longer an option. Time to go in.
    Not aware of anyone else now beyond those that would be taking cover or moving to safety, the Black Widow goes to dive off the rooftop, doing a quick sommersault. She goes to as she would land snap out her twin batons as they would charge up, landing in the fog with a bright, electric sizzle of blue. Time to hopefully make herself the center of the fire and draw it away from the girl and anyone else in the area. As soon as she's put up enough of a glow to make it clear -exactly- where she is, she's snapping the weapons halos off, hitting the ground to tuck and roll and hopefully vanish and drawing the fire where she was.

Rhona Lauren has posed:
Rhona is recording with her phone and talking to the police dispatcher when the zappy shot is taken at her. It causes the young woman to let out a yelping scream in surprise, along with her non-phone-holding-hand to snap forward, palm up! A sudden blast of air pressure shoots out from her palm, followed by the whirling presence of a glowing bright pink energy shield! It swirls in to existence in front of the girl, beside the building's edge, and it intercepts the zappy blast that was headed for her!

The teen's left hand rests against the back of her own brightly glowing shield disc. She holds it there in mid air, looking through the now distorted energy field of the large shield disc, at the fight that is unfolding, as others are arriving on the scene.

"Holy shit..." The teenager says in disbelief, but a voice on her phone makes her gather her wits about her. "Oh, I mean... some of your local types have arrived. Capes? Whatever yo ucall them. Look, you best send your officers here quickly." The British teen urges the dispatcher.

Audra Meridian has posed:
No confusion, no hesitation. Not standard firearms. Most definitely not junkies. Though that seems to be well established at this point. The energy flashes do make it a bit easier to tell when and where the men are firing from though as it defracts through the mositure in the fog. Despite the fog she's not super stealthy herself, so instead Audra ionizes her gauntlets as she holds them up, using one form of energy to help disperse the shots fired at her while she makes mental adjustments to her strategy now that it's clear this situation is more than a mere robbery. Well, if they want to play with energy emissions...

There's a brighter flash in fog, as Windrose switchs from defense to offense and releasing the charge built up in her gauntlets. In the form of a ball of lightning that she lobs towards the gunmen, and it bursts with a loud THWOOM and a discharge of a blinding electrical flash. An approximation of a flashbang grenade going off.

"That trick is really re-volting!" ... Yes, she does need to work on the quips. Alas.

Selina Kyle has posed:
    Selina doesn't have anything other than a casual relationship with gravity to help her. Call it a passing acquaintance. Forces with benefits. She rotates around to grab the lintel of the door and swing her way through. Knees tuck tight together to give her some momentum when she hits the entrance, going through. Anyone guarding the door might have the full weight of Catwoman brought feet first into their body.
    The goggles on her suit are part of the elaborate tech system worked in. Lenses can augment the lack of light, stretching into the IR spectrum if needed. She picks out mild details that the fog hasn't blurred. For safety's sake she drops low to a crouch supposing she hits nothing. Stealth for her means slinking along the ground, looking for anyone standing or holding a weapon.
    A matter to incapacitate one of the goons with speed and surprise on her side. No one likes being shot. She's not one of them. Energy flashes rocketing behind her are good reason to stay out of the blast radius.

Jean Grey has posed:
After the initial surprise of the fog cloud, the goons by the van gather their wits. They're clearly all wired for comms, although without the benefit of certain SUPER SPECIAL communication techniques certain folks like to employ, this still necessitates them speaking up, even at low levels, as they coordinate, although there's a bit of a jumble.

"Who the hell is that?"

"Alpha team! We got capes outside!"

"Doesn't mater."

"Switch optic modes-"

"Job said blackout anyone on the scene."

"-where's the button for that?"

"Whoa! Who's that? Shoot h-"

The first shot catches Rhona's barrier! It does its job!

Although, on the phone, the dispatcher she's gotten a hold of seems to react the opposite way of what she might prefer. "Supers?! Uniforms can't handle that. We gotta call the special response team."

Maybe they're NOT coming quickly...

There's more exchange of fire, although the results are mixed. The energy doesn't seem exactly electric, and while Audra's gauntlet dampens it, it gives a dangerous kind of sputter-crackle that suggests the circuitry might not appreciate her feeding it whatever that stuff is. But she manages to toss her zappy-ball back in their direction, and there's a crackling sizzle in the fog, and a few wild shots thereafter, suggesting dazed, disoriented aiming. Worse, a certain spider comes along, and while everyone can see the muzzle of a firing weapong swing in her direction, it's only a moment before it stops as one of the targets goes down in the fog with a quiet thump.

Bypassing the foggy shoot-out, Selina makes quick, silent progress. The building is pretty big, with all kinds of hallways and offices, exam and treatment rooms, labs and conference rooms, storage and computers. It would be a heck of a maze to navigate...

...Except she can kinda follow the bodies, finding the first downed rent-a-cop and piecing together a trail from there. Unlike the hospital, this building is dead silent at night, dark and quiet, very little going on, and everything disturbed stands out. Opened doors with little disturbed inside, as if they checked rooms but then continued on. She passes a directory sign, highlighting 'RADIOLOGY' a floor up, while the floors above it seem non-patient, more offices and space for whatever that 'Systems Genomics' stuff is.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Lovely, this has escalated. The adversary has gone up from being mercenaries to a mixed realm of extremely well equipped mercenaries that don't have any veneer of professionalism. That's a good and a bad thing. Professionals can be very predictable. Those without it can be easier to deal with. But those not particularly well trained are also prone to doing something which causes much more damage. Particularly near a hospital. And she doesn't have any idea who they're dealing with or what they're eqiupped with. Natasha darts in and out of the darkness. she goes to charge over towards the nearest man if she can and goes to snap out her twin batons. There's a glow over from them in the air as they would charge with electricity, as she goes to try and ifs he can move to snap them over to the neck of one man to hopefully drop him down hard. Presuing hse can, this would have her then going to try and flip him through the air at the nearest other shooter. If she was good then the other shooter, not being professional but very well equipped, would hopefully do the logical thing.
    Shoot to the approaching center of mass of the hurled thing and root in place rather than dodge. So hopefully a few bullets shot up into the sky that may or may not hit his comrade.. And if ehr aim was true she would have two bowled over and incapacitated. And then whether or not her strike hits, she's darting back into the fog to seek ehr next target. Now was not the time for play.

Rhona Lauren has posed:
Rhona once again reitareats which Hospital she's calling from, and then she lowers her phone down and shuts it off. It's not wise to hang up on 911, but this is too much now and she needs her second hand, just in case.

She holds her shield up in front of her, and steps out from behind the cover, while the 'Supes' are here to deal with the gunmen directly...

Rhona steps down off of the sidewalk, her shield-holding-hand still up and out, while she walks down to the exit driveway from where the Mercs are parked, and her free hand summons up a second shield disc. She draws in a breath, looks over her shoulder, and then 'plants it' in mid air. She begins to repeat this, moving along, building a barrier wall of circular shaped energy discs to keep the Mercs from driving out of here, should they even be able to get back in to their vehicles.

"That's right..." The British girl mutters. "I'm an X-Man now..."

She's not. She's not even close.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Not being precisely electricity is likely the very reason the conduits don't agree with it, they're designed primarily for electrical and ionized emissions. So she's probably not going to want to try and shield against to many shots. It took her long enough to rewire everything after that Dark Dimension incident and sacrifically overloading her system. That sort of electrical pulse near a place with sensative technical quipment (aka the hospital) would be a Very Bad Accident. Also, the fog effect is starting to fade... She's finding a lot of cities don't hold ominous fog as well as Gotham does for some reason. Go figure. Atmospheric mysteries for another night.

All the chitchat, despite the mens' best efforts to keep it low key, is a clue there's something else going on here. Okay, time to try and put a quicker stop to this.

Windrose uses the boosters of her her Zephyr boots to launch herself charging towards one of the remaining gunmen. Swinging with one fist as she does to throw haymaker punch at him. Getting slugged with metal clad knuckles is probably unpleasant on it's own. "I'm gonna rock you like a hurricane!"

If that was all he had to deal with. But not quite so, as her punch reachs it's climax she fires off a shockwave of air pressure to amplify it farther, and give a bit more oomp to the strike if the man tries to counter. Not quite actual hurricane force winds, but whoever gets hit by it might feel like they got hit by a tropical storm!

Selina Kyle has posed:
    The dark figure of Catwoman doesn't engage the van or the security guards. She only stops long enough to check the fallen bodies for life signs. Breathing, heart rate, that kind of tell. Absent any, the corpse warns her how serious a foe she faces. With them, a hint of bought mercy placed in mercenaries maybe not paid to kill. She's betting on the efficiency in death route.
    Slipping deeper in NYU Langone invites photographic evidence, a feed built in that stores data in a trio of chips. She activates the broadcast in small sliced snapshots taken in silent bursts. The way to move here is balletic, stalking after a door and using corners or walls to hoist herself up for a higher position. Splaying herself out to get a good look without being seen matters. The odd security camera might still function. If it does, a cat burglar might need to redirect it on approach.
    The stairs get a grimacing look. No way around the fact. Feeling around, she comes up with a standard penny or two. Useful things to toss ahead if she needs to. Barring that, a small round mirror is her tool of choice to carefully look around corners before confirming if any mercenaries are up on the next floor. Radiology, peculiar choice. Labs to be inspected, and above that, DNA? Casing a place and sweeping likely routes in and out is a specialty in trade for Selina at least. None of this is new, just mostly distasteful.
    WWBS?
    She can only hope the fight down below keeps people busy or they start coming up.

Jean Grey has posed:
Natasha's analysis is definitely on point here. As mercenaries, crooks, hired muscle, whatever you want to call them... they're average. Not incompetent, not elite. Their GEAR is, and that's an interesting part of the equation, where the distance between soldier and weapon may be the most obvious weakness. Playing with toys they're not 100% familiar with. Meanwhile, she very much is an expert at this kind of thing, and goes through them with exacty the expert grace you'd expect from the superspy: she moves from one to the next, evading their aim and then getting in too close for the guns to be much use, while her batons deliver very effective stunning ZZZAPS of their own. They DO seem to be tracking her through the fog, but that doesn't mean their bodies can quite keep up, nor their aim. One, then another, and finally he's thrown toward the third. It's here that something surprising happens.

He does lift his gun to shoot at the body flying toward him, but the fancy tech gun throws a curve ball: with Nat behind the man hurled his way, it turns out he's not aiming at his friend in surprise, but aiming -through- him at Natasha. And for the first time, that strange blue pulse hits a target. Or rather, it hits two. The guy flying at him catches it square in the chest. And then behind him, Nat gets the rest. This isn't a 'blows a hole through his chest and hits her' kind of through-and-through either. The first guy lands stunned, his back smoking lightly, but there's no hole. The beam just seems to penetrate matter to some distance.

Fortunately for Natasha, it seems the bolt loses some of its energy on the way, and so while it hits her like a mule kick, it doesn't fully incapacitate her.

Meanwhile! Windrose rocketboots her way in, charging the pair she'd effectively dazed with her prior electric flashy thing. This leaves them quite unprepared, and while the one she goes for definitely tries to block, he's got nothing to stop a hurricane punch. He goes flying, almost comically!

His buddy does a less high tech thing and tries to hit her with his rifle stock.

Meanwhile, Rhona has built a wall. It is a very nice wall! And it does seem like it would prove a good obstacle to anyone fleeing the parking lot.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Selina continues to talk through the building. As she reaches the stairs, her mirror, at least, can confirm no-one lurking for her in ambush. But the door, one floor up, is slightly a-jar.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Someone's paid a great deal for solid eqiupment that looks very high quality but not bothered to put the same amount of money into hiring professionals. That seems very contradictory to Natasha, even for a field test. You don't send in someone disposable with the high quality merchandise, particularly when it means that whatever advantage you have can be taken by someone else. Something to hoepfully have some of tehm conscious for later and enough of the equipment left intact for whatever local agency has jurisdiction to sort through it.
    Natasha smashes through the fog, going to move to let one man do with his momentum to take through another. The pulse going through one man, however, goes to then strike her in the back. It doesn't hurt much; she's suffered far worse. But having it strike her when she wasn't expecting it nor was she braced for it is still rough. The Black Widow hits the ground adn goes into a quick tumble and roll to get back upto her feet. Her Widow's Bites power down quickly. Whatever this is is messing with all the electronics. She'll have to review the incident report later. So now just have to do it simply.
    Hand to hand. So she's moving to quickly go after one of the ones that's standing, intent on simply trying to bash him in the back of the head wiht her baton, turning it into a followup strike to snap his knee out from under him,and then hopefully kick him in the back of the head to render him fully unconsciuos. Presuming Windrose can quickly do the same wiht her own opponent, Natasha goes. "Get in there and go seek out the hostages or whomever they have upstairs." She's presuming anyone up there -is- a hostage.
    "I'll make sure that these ones won't be up and after us." Make sure your opponents are down and disarmed and aren't going to give you an unpleasant surprise down the line.

Rhona Lauren has posed:
With her wall of energy disc setup, Rhona steps off to the side and raises her phone up again to start to record what she's seeing. She sends some of the images to her friend back in Westchester, and then shoots a text along with them.

(I don't know if I want to go to college in the city now, after this)

(Think I might just stay at the weird cult school. At least they have good wifi.)

Her eyes dart back up to the heroes as they make the fight seem to turn in to their favor.

"Hey, what is going on here anyway?!" The British teen calls out, not really expecting an answer.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Bad quip attempts aside, the technique worked. She literally blew him away.

Amusement is short-lived though, as Windrose turns just in time to get the non-business end of a rifle thrust at her. She tries to move, but still catchs it at an angle to her head, which makes her stagger back a step. Puts up one gauntlet to rub her face a bit, muttering something about this why you were proper personal protection. Presumably she's talking about the goggles and headcover she's wearing.

"Ugh. That bites." Regaining her bearings, she holds up one palm towards him. "But this -frost-bites!" .. realy, Audra? Even she's groaning internally at that one, while releasing a blast of super-frigid air at the man's face. The sting of sudden low temperature should be enough to overwhelm the senses, if not just knock him out.. well.. cold.

.. And when did another person get here? Huh. Though the woman brings up a good point... they were probably waiting for someone. "Sounds like a plan, miss. This one is already iced, shouldn't be hard to keep down."

After which Windrose bolts for the doors inside. While silently cursing at herself for not putting more thought into witty things to say ahead of time.

Selina Kyle has posed:
    The open door beckons for Selina to come closer, like a bit of feather fluff on a string. Calls, but that's an old tune familiar to her for more than a few years. She doesn't just go inside, positioning one of the pennies in her left hand for a better throw if she needs it. Bit of legerdemain never goes astray when needed.
    She glides for the door, cautiously zigzagging and using the wall for cover. Her skills in staying unheard and unseen aren't quite to Batman's standards but close. Getting the drop on him is a standard game to play. Sliding along the hallway gives her a chance to spot anything in there, anyone visible through glass that might be in the door. Silhouettes moving, a sound to be heard. Her goggles trace the presence of heat in a red bloom.
    Silvery claws play against the tips of her gloves. Tension keeps growing as she pauses again, giving herself time to adjust to any sounds that might be ahead. She can't hear booms or bangs much below. Nor Windrose's quips, which is really quite a shame! They could be stuffed in Oracle's computer somewhere.
    Door then. If no sounds and no movement, a peek through the gap at a distance after casing out the approach.

Jean Grey has posed:
The parking area goons are mopped up in due course, with Natasha getting her revenge on Mr. Fancy Gun, who looks quite worried when his successful shot doesn't drop her. "Alpha, we're in trouble down here, exit's blocked, suggest alternate-" He does raise the gun to shoot again, even as he's speaking into his microphone, but his target isn't so unaware this time around. Once up close, her hand-to-hand techniques overwhelm him quite trivially. The fancy gun is worth about as much as an awkwardly shaped club.

... which is also what Windrose discovers, albeit a little more consequentially. Yet she too will have her revenge, and her sudden arctic blast disables him in turn. Or maybe it was the pure power of her truly terrible hero chatter!

Regardless, it's all clear down there.

Inside, Selina continues her stalking approach. The others will take a few moments to catch up, and will make a LOT more noise than the practiced cat burglar did. In fact, she's likely to hear them on the floor below, perhaps even before the robbers upstairs do.

Oh, right, the robbers.

As she peers into that next hallway, she can easily spot the residual IR on her goggles, vague splotches of fading yellow against the cool, neutral blue of the environment. Heat signs, but slightly out of date. They get warmer, toward a particular room. And... then MUCH warmer. There's something on in there, machinery. The big red blob of it totally obscures the forms of any people in there with it.

But she can hear them. "Guys downstairs are toast."

"That was always just backup... we just gotta turn this thing off, then join the boys upstairs. And then home free."

"What about the others?"

"What about em? Fuck those guys."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Taking roughly thirty seconds to ensure that the men are fully unconscious, remove and disable thier weapons and equipment and quickly strip it as best she can in those few moments, Natasha's going up and over in to the stairwell shortly after. The others are ahead of her and she's going along at least wiht some quiet, but not stealth. She goes to switch to the feed from the cameras, going to now that she's done wiht the fight try and get hookups from the upstairs feeds to see if she can track where she's going with them.
    She has her weapons in front o fher now, having a baton in one hand and it charged up and over. Her listening ahead for signs of the men upstairs, or hsotages. Ultimately her first charge would be saving civilians and trying to minimize collateral damage.
    So that had to be her priority. Why did everythign have to be so copmlicated when she started trying to go straight?

Rhona Lauren has posed:
Rhona watches the last of the men outside get disabled by the fancy Supes. She narrows her eyes as they rush on inside the hospital, which makes her look up the exterior of the building, before she drops her eyes and looks over to her barrier wall she'd built.

"Well. I suppose it was good practice if nothing else." She says, to herself, walking past the glowing discs she draws them back to her up-raised left hand, her fingertips glowing a bright pink as she re-absorbs the energy. One by one the circular discs are taken back inside her hand, and vanish back in to thin, cold, autumn air.

When they're all gathered up again, Rhona tentatively walks closer to the area the Mercs were beat up in. That one short lady took their weapons, thus Rhona doesn't feel quite so nervous about getting closer to them, but she's a nobody here, and thusly is just observing from afar for now.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Well, someone is already in here, and they left a mess behind.

Windrose can't really use her dash boots inside the hospital, so she's going to have to foot it the old fashioned way. Not like she's slow or anything, but even with the occasional body on the floor to follow it's going to take a few minutes to find a path to get to the bottom of all this... or would top be more accurate, if they're going upstairs? Hopefully someone has a better idea of what's going on here once they do find the source of the problem.

Selina Kyle has posed:
    Selina listens. What she hears doesn't sound particularly good. Expendables downstairs, something mechanized up there being ported off to who knows where.
    Higher up, more people. The odds aren't exactly to her liking but neither are the chances she can reach a room from the outside, hope there is a window, and gain entry. The flexible lines in her cuff bracelets offer possibilities. Tiptoeing along on the balls of her feet carry her closer to the stairwell, closer to another smear of colour that marks where someone was. Two, together. Possibly more. Hallways that don't offer much to hide in but doorways and the occasional piece of furniture in a lounge. She searches for a niche with couches, anything to set her back to, and looks up for the fire suppressant system.
    Those things can be sensitive to flame. Igniting them is fully a possibility to wreck a machine and someone's day. Something useful for the lady with the fog talents to make use of even if Catwoman doesn't know it.

Jean Grey has posed:
It's not much trouble to secure the mercs, once they're out. Unconscious, they don't have much information to provide, although a closer-up glance at some of their equipment will note it's curious construction. Namely, that it's a little... Frankenstein-ish, as if upgraded from more basic stock. Well, maybe not basic. There's a handful of mid-tier high tech organizations of shady disposition like the alphabet soup of A.I.M. or H.I.V.E. which could produce stuff like this, but most of it shows signs of post-market modification even beyond that.

Inside, the two who seem to be working in the room continue on their task: "How do we turn it off?"

"What do I look like, some kind of scientist?"

"It says 'warning radiation,' I dont wanna get mutated or something."

"I'm sure its safe, if they left it on. Some kind of long-term research project. There an 'off' switch?"

"I don't see one. How about a plug?"

The place definitely has fire suppressant systems, it's a very modern building and presumably held to pretty strict safety codes.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
She's running behind the others now. Selina, Audra, and the ever-totally-soon-to-be an X-Woman Rhona are definitely ahead of her. So coming over towards the staircases, the Black Widow hears the sounds of heavy thumps, gears,a nd chatter and knows that the situation is going to escalate. How lovely. This is going to be fun." She's not suer who there is ahead of her, and if there's any other support. She goes to send a quick tac report along the Avenger's channel to whomever is on monitor duty..
    And then she's making her way towards the stairs. She's quiet, but not invisible. Anyone in the area that's not fully up in the room can likely tell that she's coming. There's a rhythm to her walk, a pattern as she tries to use the sounds of thumping and chatter from above to cover the sounds of her steps.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Audra Meridian eventually catchs up to the proper doorway, slowing as she does so she can get a look inside. Though it's unlikely she's been unnoticed, she wasn't exactly the sort of stealthy type to begin with. And while technicially a scientist she's in totally the wrong field to make sense of whatever advanced equipment people are gawking over inside, beyond it's probably special and really expensive.

She's actually at a bit of a disadvantage now, as she can't just go full bore with her tech like she did in the parking lot. Hmmm. Now what.

The downside to stopping to take stock the situation and realizing you'll need to restrain yourself a bit now.

Jean Grey has posed:
Audra is probably the first to make it up, as Natasha takes a moment more with the captives down below.

While the spying cat-lady had the opportunity to get a bit of intel from the chitchat, and perhaps thought wiser of throwing herself into the fray, the less-stealthy approach means they have an idea someone is coming by the time she reaches the door. The room is, well, a pretty small lab. If one is expecting some kind of terrifying doomsday machine, it's a dissapointment for sure. This is a hospital.

In fact, it's probably not really clear what they're looking at, without a scientific background. The machine at the center fo the room is pretty much a rectangular box with some panels on the side, and blends in well with the other equipment in terms of style. It's not actually terribly loud or anything either, although there's some kind of hum to it.

It does look expensive. And probably delicate. And because they're trapped, the two guys in there trying to turn it off have taken up positions on the far corners. One is hiding behind a desk, the other using supply cabinet of some kind as cover. They have their weapons aimed at the door, and pew-pew happily at the intruder!

Nat will arrive to find the situation as such, the two defending the room from someone coming in. However, her more spy-like awareness - and various forms of electronic espionage (or even just grabbing one of the headsets from the guys below) - might also clue her in two what Selina had caught on their comms: that there's not just these two on the radiology floor, but others above.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Lovely, this is turning over into a small grade skirmish. And there's more upstairs. And Natasha doesn't have the room to necessarily engage and ambush the two without bringing the rest of the ones on the upper floors down with them. She's not Tony (or Bruce) and she doesn't have someone on the line which can explain what htat thing is. Sos he has to go in with gloves on and hope that she doesn't do anything to set it off, and can take it relatively intact. Two men over in soft cover mean she can't charge in there shooting.

The other metahuman going in there also means she can't coordinate. So Natasha can just hope that the other girl's powerset goes to let her handle what's coming reasonably well..

She goes to prime two things over in her hands. They're both compact devices that have micro-flares, tiny bits of glass, and small globules of matter hooked up to small micro-detonators that would spray it on trigger.
    As the pewpew goes on Natasha moves to call out over to Windrose, "Bright Light!" Then she moves to hurl them over through the air, to hopefully have the simple flash bangs detonate over in the middle of the room.. An dhoping that Audra cues in to what's up and can handle things.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Audra Meridian jerks back as defensive gunfire comes from the men inside of the room. Crap, whatever it is in there, they're willing to fight to defend it.

Then there's the shout coming up behind her. Fortunately she's smart enough to react instead of question what the shout was about, ducking down and looking away from the moment as the spygirl comes up and lobs the flash bangs into the other room.

Time to keep things a bit more precise. In the moments after the bright light goes off she glances back up, points one gauntlet towards the desk, and fires off a smaller focused stream of air power. Aimed at the desk itself. She's trying to knock it backwards into the the gunman hiding behind it in the moments he's hopefully distracted by the flash bang going off.

Jean Grey has posed:
The flashbangs go in, and go off. There's a bright, well, flash that follows. And maybe there's a degree to which those fancy optics help. But then again, it's pretty close range, tight quarters, and there's the shockwave too, that goes with the high-decibel audible component. The 'bang' part of the flash.

So it definitely makes them both flinch back or otherwise recoil, and in that moment, Audra sweeps in with a blast of air, pushing one of the gunmen back into the corner and the desk likewise back against him in a pretty spectacular crash.

All of this is also pretty imprecise, though, and in the aftermath. The machine in the center... well, it still doesn't do a whole lot, in terms of scary sounds or blowing up. But several lights turn red on the display on the side. Is it damaged?

There's two gunmen in there, though, and the second one recovers enough to line up a shot back at Audra.

But he doesn't get to take it.

While all of this is happening, the general level of clamor and catastrophe seems to have signaled the guys above. And rather than coming in through the staircase, they come -down- through the ceiling, blowing it out with small charges. A rain of debris falls, from bits of those cheap pressed ceiling tiles that most modern office buildings use, to dust and plaster and other more substantive materials. On the edges of the hole in the ceiling above, three more of the men look down. Well, two more of them... and a third who stands out from the bunch, easily a foot taller, and slimmer in build. He's carrying a similar, though perhaps more elegantly-shaped sci-fi rifle in one hand, couched in his armpit, while he has a large metal container tucked under the other arm.

"No more time for this screwing around. We have it, time to go." While the other two might offer suppressive fire against the two heroes, the third aims his weapon...

And fires it right into the device. This time, electronics blow out a little more spectacularly, and that hum goes cold. Whatever the machine does, it's not doing it now.

Audra Meridian has posed:
Well normally it's from strong winds or heavy rain, but portions of building crumbling and collapsing is something Audra is experienced enough with, quickly scrabbling back to the doorway to stay clear of the bits of ceiling dropping. Followed by the men. And... they got 'it'? What it? This machine wasn't what they were after? Then why post men down he--

-- The train of thought is cut short as the taller of the mercs who seems to be in charge turns and fires on said machine instead of them, disabling it. "Sonnuva!" she yelps, shielding her face with one gauntlet arm in case the thing decides to really blow up.

Being in middle of a hospital is the one thing that's keeping her from firing back, she doesn't want to risk her weather effects turning this into an even bigger fiasco.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
There's debris raining down on them from above. Natasha, whom was several meters away having flipped in the flashbangs over ot the room, is only covered up partially by it and far enough away to have not been blinded over. The machine is.. Shutting down? Powering down? It's definitely being suppressed and depowered. Or something is facilitating it.
    Then, remembering over what just a short melee ago what had happened when she had used her Widow's Bite in the midst of the engagement.. Natasha Romanoff goes to ever, ever so quickly yank up three of her small grappler bites - darts with a capacitor that had a series of 'teeth' to hold them on firm to what they hit on the taser end. She goes to then from her position over at the end of the room to flip the darts through the air, one aimed at each of the trio of men. Then a fourth is flung over towards the rifle that the big man had in his hand that he'd just shot over at the device. It's time to play dirty.
    She goes to shoot them through the air, four flung with hopefully decent accuracy; she's not Hawkeye or Green Arrow, her throws can only be so good.. Even as she's yelling over in the direction of Audra, "Be a Shock Jock!" Using something that Clint would use pains her. But hopefully it's enough for the girl that Natasha has seen operate on too painful for Spider-Man level puns to get the cue of what she's doing.

Audra Meridian has posed:
That's exactly what Audra needs. Something to aim and direct through to keep an electric blast under control. "Time to amp things up then!" She lets loose with one more quip and a quick discharge to channel into the darts Widow used as projectiles. Hopefully this works!

Jean Grey has posed:
"What the hell! You shot it? We're all gonna die of radiation!" screams one of the guys downtairs, in the after math of the machine's destruction.

The tall man doesn't seem concerned, even if his expression is unreadable under the mask and goggles. "That's really not how any of this works." After he machine is destroyed, he pauses, bringing the gun hand closer to his face, to observe... it seems like some kind of device on his wrist, possibly with a display on it. "Good, background levels are dropping. We should-"

Although Audra is understandably initially deterred by the rapidly more destructive scenario playing out for her, the Black Widow has her typical trained focus. The mission, and nothing else. She tosses the handful of darts. Maybe it's a one-in-a-hundred kind of shot to hit all of them. She makes 3 of 4, only 'missing' the gun, and even then not really: it hits but doesn't 'catch', those barbs failing to snag the strangely smooth metal.

A moment later, Audra finds her heroic mettle to leap in and join the attack, upping the juice as the bites each fire off their charges!

One by one, each hosts an impressive light storm, electricity coursing over their bodies. One by one, they drop.

Except for the tall one.

The electricity courses over him all the same, but like Natasha taking the energy blast earlier... it just doesn't seem to have the necessary stopping power. He cocks his head, looking down at her. "Not bad."% Then, without ceremony (or interest in his fallen companions), he reaches across to tap that wrist device.

And promptly vanishes into thin air, along with the container held under his arm.

---

In the aftermath, it will be Rhona who first meets the police as they arrive with their task force, rolling up with armored carriers and officers in full SWAT gear. Circling the van, they quickly fan out across the area, moving to verify and secure the lot, and then the building, floor-by-floor. Plenty of time for any one not to be there by the time they get upstairs, to find the remnants of the destructive scene.