13481/Conspiracy and Amazon Home Security

Conspiracy and Amazon Home Security
Date of Scene:	06 December 2022
Location:	Ross Residence, New York
Synopsis:	Pete Ross makes a break through, figuring out who high up in the US Government is HYDRA and the proof to lock them away for good. If only he wasn't abruptly teleported out of his home at that very moment before he could unmask the villain. Teleporting in, some HYDRA goons there to clean up the scene run in to the wraith of the Amazons.
Cast of Characters:	Pete Ross, Diana Prince

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Pete Ross has posed:
Like every other night for the past few days, Pete stops in his drive way and exits the car. The added security is intrusive but necessary according to his friend Clark. Holding his brief case tight he waits for the signal to exit the car.

"Good evening," he says to Diana and the other Amazons. Less talking until inside is always better it seems so he waits as they enter the premises to check that it's all clear again. Dressed in a business suit as always, the Deputy Secretary of Defense has gotten kind of used to this special treatment.

"I sent Mary and the kids to stay with her sister this morning," he mentions since the house is now devoid of life. "After they tried to kill the President. That's not public information though so.. don't tell anyone."

Diana Prince has posed:
How bad could having two women over 5'11, well fit, well shaped, and well trained be your personal bodyguards? Foreign to this land, as they may be, their accented English doesn't take away from that exotic tone of them. At least they're dressed like your average New Yorkers at this time of year. Diria and Luma are their names, both are dark haired, and both stand at roughly 6 feet in height. Dressed in leather jackets of black and brown, they seem casual, but professional in how they carry themselves. Glints of their armored bracers peak out from the cuffs of their jackets now and then, but otherwise they don't show any signs of armor or weapons on their persons.

With Diana being here this evening, the trio looks a bit more unusual, considering all three are of the same unusual height, and physical appearance, but Diana is dressed more business casual in the moment, rather than just casual casual like her sisters. In a black coat, black slacks, and her hair tied back, the Princess of the Amazons has on a pair of black framed glasses for style more than necessity.

She affords Pete a small smile and a nod. "Of course." She quietly says in her Themysciran accented English. "I am told things have been thankfully quiet, so that is a positive, I should say."

Pete Ross has posed:
Pete nods his head, "Yes. It seems we've gotten away with it for now." His hand tightens on the brief case again though. He peeks his head in to the house as the Amazons do their sweep. The place is, as it has been the last few days, a mess. Printed notes, a few tablets, a laptop, the living room is his own personal 'murder board' research area.

With the all clear he enters and turns on the lights. "Make yourself at home," he comments as he sets the brief case down on the coffee table. Suit jacket off and tossed over the back. "Mary was relieved to be away from this mess I've made."

Opening up the brief case he pulls back a hidden lining and takes out a usb thumb stick. This he inserts in to his laptop. "You Amazons aren't what I expected," he thinks outloud as he starts to run his eyes over a spreadsheet he's just opened.

"Heck I don't know what I was expecting now that I've said it. I suppose I watched too much American Gladiator as a kid," he says with a small chuckle. "What I'm trying to say is - you're all darned impressive. Excuse the language."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diria and Luma both start to explore the home once they're allowed inside. They fan out in different directions, leaving Diana with Pete. The Princess gives a look around the home, smiles softly when he says to make themselves comfortable, and then is looking back toward him when he compliments them.

She smiles softly.

Her eyes go after her sisters who are further delving in to the house now, before she looks back to him. "Well. I believe it best not to be bounding about on Kanga, and draped head to toe in battle armor for this assignment." She fires back, showing a hint of a grin touching at the corners of her red-hued lips.

"We are here to help you though, as the situation seems to be sadly dire in nature. Hopefully, however, nothing comes of it."

Pete Ross has posed:
Pete nods his head, "It's keeping me up and night. I don't dare take sleeping pills, even with you fine warriors watching over me." He taps on a few more cells and then leans forward. "Hello - you're very interesting aren't you."

Data, it's just data. He starts to highlight a few cells in his spreadsheet and then looks back over to Diana. "I've never seen a Kanga. How similar are they to Kangaroos of Australia? or.. just a similar name and not at all alike?"

He looks back at the laptop and then over at the papers on the walls. Rising, he starts to unpick one here, one there, gathering them in his hands as if he's on to something. He sits back down at the laptop and starts to compare the cells to the papers.

The corner of his mouth twitches and he smiles. "I've got you," he says under his breath and starts to look over the papers trying to correlate. "Dead to rights my son, dead to rights. We're going to nail you to the wall."

Reaching over he grabs his phone and doesn't have to scroll at all for Clark's number. He enters in to SMS and sends him a text:
<<"I figured it out, who is behind it all. I have the proof. We can take him down before anyone else gets hurt. How soon can we meet?">>

Diana Prince has posed:
Diria and Luma are further in to the home now, out of the room that Diana and Pete occupy. Diana steps over to a selection of pictures hanging on the wall, Pete's family featured in them. She smiles softly as she eyes them while listening to the man off behind her right shoulder.

"Oh, they are much larger than an Austrailian Kangaroo. Much stronger too... Similar in appearance, but with greater proportions." She answers him before the rest of what he says causes her to tear her eyes away from the photos.

She ends up not far from him as he sends that text off. "Good progress?" The Princess asks, her hands still in the pockets of her black coat, her eyes behind her glasses going from his phone to his face again.

Pete Ross has posed:
Ross sets the phone down and stands up, bundling laptop and papers under his arm and looking to his briefcase to carry them. He looks excited and very pleased with himself. "You could say that. I not only know who it is, but the proof to put him away. It's-"

There's a flash of light around Pete and sudden, he and the papers he was holding, as well as teh laptop -- gone.

There is a moment of quiet in the room; the teleportation as precise and didn't leave a mark. There's another set of flashes everywhere around the living room and six men are standing there dressed in black. Two are carrying a large heavy object.

The men stare at Diana, not at all sure who she is - they clearly thought no one would be here. One of them cracks his neck and says gruffly, "Get her."

Diana Prince has posed:
Of course Diana was quite eager to find out what Pete had discovered, but just as he was seemingly about to lay it out there, he was up and gone in a literal flash. Diana had the reflexes of a God, but there was nothing she could do. Where Pete once was, now there was nothing. Including his computer? That ...

diana is tilting her head and steping toward the space the man had occupied when the six others just appear around the room in his place. She quickly darts her head around to each of them, her ponytail swaying behind her shoulders, but that order of 'get her' gets Diana to react...

Her golden lasso snaps out of her jacket and she grasps it in her black gloved hands! The twine snaps to life in a blaze of divine power! She doesn't waste a moment as she snaps it down toward one man's legs to bind them, to snap them together, and to tug them out from under him, as she spins across her rope and ducks low, sending her right leg out to leg-sweep another of the six to drop him to the ground on his back!

The sounds, the action, draws both of Diana's sisters from within the home, and now they're rushing toward two of the men closest to where they entered from.

The poor Ross house is now the site of a full blown ruckuss!

Pete Ross has posed:
These men fight like mercenaries and not the kind who have ever faced Amazons before. Dressed in black with ski masks, each has an uzi and despite their best efforts and training, they can't seem to hit the Amazons they're fighting.

The wall becomes peppered with lines of bullets as each one is laid out flat within moments of the combat starting. The big device they were carrying? it sits idly in the room, disabled. Such a device has been seen before by SHIELD a few years ago. It's a holographic projector.

No one else suddenly appears out of thin air. This mission was meant to be simple - get in, clean up the intelligence, set up the projector, and walk away. Instead they encountered one of the most elite fighting forces on the planet.

Pete's phone still sits on the coffee table. He hadn't sent send on his last message which reads 'Perhaps it's best you come here - I don't want to travel with this intel. I'm also safer here with the ... protection ... you organised'. And so on the other end of this chat are three little dots '...' animating over and over again to Clark, warning him that something has gone wrong.

Diana Prince has posed:
Diria and Luma both take out the two men that turned to face them with those insane guns. The guns were sent clattering off to the sides as the women snapped wrists, and threw the men across the room in to walls, shattering pictures on the walls, and sending furniture toppling over around them.

The other four men? They fall to the lasso of Hestia, and Diana's blurring speed. She has them on their backs, or smashed up against a wall in a matter of heart beats, the gunfire that had gone off had been aimed at her, but her ducking speed, her agility and trained combat prowess conserves her well being in this fight.

She's not even winded at the end of it either, and her lasso of Truth is wrapped around the man who'd said 'get her' when it all started.

Diana looks to the device in the room, then down to the man wrapped up in her lasso. She steps on his uzi, smashing it beneath her foot.

"Who are you? Where is Pete?" Diana asks, with the lasso flaring brightly, compelling the man to speak what Truth he may know of those questions posed.

Pete Ross has posed:
The last conscious man in the room is not a demi-god of willpower, he struggles for a moment as the words come out of him strained and pained. "Zavier Griffin Trentworth the Third," he says his full name. Malicious compliance or just the will of the lasso?

He grits his teeth a moment and looks away from the powerful Amazon, "At Zenofia.. Last bastion of the HYDRA Hegemony, founded by Arturo Malevolo de Roma." He can't believe he's blurting all of this out to the stranger. "In Italy, 1580.. something."

He looks up at her and is compelled to be more precise. Where is Pete, "I .. don't know where Zenofia is. We are always teleported there. It feels tropical." He lets out a small pant as he gets the truth out.

Diana Prince has posed:
Luma walks over toward the phone that Pete had left behind. She gathers it up and reads its screen while Diria moves around to the other five men. She disables their guns, and uses zip-ties to bind them where they are on the floor... the Amazons adjusting to a modern life style, so it seems.

Diana takes in what this man says, then looks to the machine that was brought in with them. "What is this? Can it take us to where Peter has been taken?" She inquires, her eyes going back to the man at the end of her glowing golden twine, its length applying a very powerful heat should he even try to fight the urge to spill all of the beans.

Pete Ross has posed:
That heat comes and goes just as quickly as he lets out a gulp of pain, "It's.. a holographic projector. So that anyone coming to the house would think Peter Ross was still here and fine." He shakes his head quickly, "No. It can't get you to him. Only the operators at Zenofia can bring people there -"

He pauses and the lasso heats up again. The implied question is obvious and he says, "We're meant to meet a contact at the wharf in a weeks time to return to Zenofia." He pants again and slumps a little, frowning. Betraying HYDRA is a crime punishable by death.

"Hey you've got to help me. If they find out I've told you any of this I'm a dead man. I need.. witness protection or something." He's thinking about his own caboose now which is usually a good sign.

Diana Prince has posed:
AS the man speaks these truths, Luma steps over to Diana to display the phone to her, along with its contents. They share a glance, and then Diana looks back down the length of rope in her black gloved hands toward the man wrapped up at the end of it.

The Princess crouches down beside him then, her right hand reaching out to grasp hold of his clothing around his chest. She lifts him up off the ground a little. "Oh, you will be protected." She says in a serious tone of her smoky voice. "You will be quite safe within a Justice League holding cell." She drops him back on the ground then, and rises back up. Her eyes once more on Luma. "Contact the others aboard the Jet. We need to transport these men to Metropolis. The location of their pick-up spot will need to be watched next..."

Luma nods softly and speaks a soft word to Diana as she steps toward the small hall toward the kitchen. Diria steps up beside Diana then after securing the other men.

"Your employers are very good at making very bad decisions, it seems." She warns the man on the ground at her feet.

Pete Ross has posed:
The man slumps to the ground and rubs at his arms where the lasso burned hottest. He's not actually burnt it just felt that way to him. "You don't know who you're up against," he states flatly. It seems he's still in a talkative mood even without the lasso compelling him.

"HYDRA has been manipulating the world for centuries. Half the people who work for them do so out of fear, legacy, brain washing... the true believers: they're the dangerous ones. I don't know who is at the top, I just got my orders and did them or else they'd kill my family."

He frowns a touch, "At least, that's.. that's how it was until I tried to get out. They killed them all. Next, they tell me it's friends and friends of friends and it never stops. They're everywhere, in everything. You can't defeat them because ... they -are- capitalism."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana has the lasso coiled up at her waist now, as Diria crouches now to bind the talkative man at his wrists, then at his ankles. The two Amazons both glance up at him as he continues to speak. The Princess just shakes her head ever so slightly at him. "HYDRA is a representation of the evil within the heart of mankind. Fueled by greed, a lust for power, and a sociopathic disregard for the compassion that should be shown to others in need."

Once Diria has the man secured, he's brought up to his feet, t stand in front of Diana, her eyes still behind those black framed glasses.

"The vipers within the tall grass, will be found, and dealt with." She says to him then before nodding to Diria to escort him outside where the Invisible Jet is now becoming quite visible, hovering just above the street outside, a long dagger-like shape hued in the color of summer time clouds.